BJ 1691 
.B5 
1916 
Copy 1 



Hie Road 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




00027^11845 




Glass. 
Book. 



bti\ 



"R S 

\ — X-,, ,-J >«' 



THE ROAD TO 

•SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG * 



The Road to 

Seventy Years Young 



or 



The Unhabitual Way 



By 

"VU/u. Emily M. Bishop 

Author of "Health and Self-Expression" and "Interpretative 
Forms of Literature 



**It is better to be seventy years young than forty years old.''* 
— Oliver Wendell Holmes 



NEW YORK 
B. W. HUEBSCH 

1916 



Copyright, 1907, by <\\ 

B. W. HUEBSCH / \^V* 

~ ^ ^ U> 

First printing, May, 1907 % >7i \ 
Second printing, October, 1907 \ * 
Third printing, September, 1909 
Fourth printing, September, 1911 
Fifth printing, January, 1916 




PRINTED IN U. vS. A. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTE 


R 


PAGB 




Foreword ...... 


vii 


I. 


Old-Age Bugaboos . 


3 


II. 


The Tendency of the Times . , 


13 


III. 


No " Time-Expired" Men . 


25 


IV. 


Concerning Birthdays , 


33 


V. 


Old Age a Condition . , 


- 47 


VI. 


Habit and Old Age , 


57 


VII. 


Keep Out of Ruts . . 


. 73 


VIII. 


Body and Brain Commerce . . , 


. 85 


IX. 


The Habit of the Unhabitual . 


- 95 


X. 


"If To Do Were As Easy " . 


. "3 


XI. 


Keeping the Body Young . . , 


123 


XII. 


Social Ruts . . . • , 


149 


XIII. 


Domestic Ruts . , 


■ 173 


XIV. 


Thinking and Feeling Ruts . ♦ , 
[vl 


, 191 



FOREWORD 

Psychology teaches that " the antecedent 
step to getting a thing done is to suggest it 
forcibly, or, in everyday parlance, ' to put 
it into his head.' "* The purpose of this 
book is " to put it into the heads " of its 
readers that they can add ( i ) life to their 
years and (2) years to their life. 

The suggestions given herein are addressed 
quite as much to those who are still young in 
years as to those who have lived two or more 
score of years. There inevitably comes a 
time, sooner or later, when every one is per- 
sonally interested in not growing old; and the 
earlier in life that one's attention is directed 

* Halleck's "Education of the Nervous System," 

[vii] 



FOREWORD 

to rational ways of postponing oldness, the 
better for the individual. 

The idea that the writer has tried to pre- 
sent, simply and practically, is that man's 
responses and reactions to life are virtually 
within his own control; that the quality and 
number of his responses and reactions deter- 
mine, to a large degree, his oldness or young- 
ness. 

Frequent references to the interrelation of 
mind and body have been made. It is ear- 
nestly hoped that no one may confound the 
statements regarding this interrelation with 
transcendental theories or unsubstantiated 
metaphysical dogmas. Care has been exer- 
cised that only such statements should be made 
as are warranted by recent physiological and 
psychological research and demonstration. 



[viii] 



"All men would live long, but no 
one desires to be old.'' — Swift. 

"The creed of the street is, Old 
Age is not disgraceful, but immensely 
disadvantageous. ' ' — Emerson. 



OLD-AGE BUGABOOS 

No sane person desires to be old. Some 
philosophic make-believers may declare that 
" they are looking forward to a good old 
age," or that " they do not mind being old." 
Such declaration is only a gracious bowing 
to what they believe to be the inevitable. 
But is old age at a certain year-period inev- 
itable? May not the venerable belief that 
it is, be one of those " false beliefs decked 
in truth's garb which tangle and entwine man- 
kind with error " ? May we not be tangled 
and entwined in error of mistaking old-age 
bugaboos for old age? 

Before seeking ways and means to the at- 
tainment of Seventy Years Young, let us, 

[3] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

first of all, distinguish between organic old 
age and some of the most prevalent of these 
old-age bugaboos. 

The worst hobgoblin of all is years. Years, 
the mere arbitrary measurement of time ! In 
themselves they are nothing — intangible, im- 
ponderable, invisible. And yet who entirely 
escapes their paralyzing influence? They 
have literally terrorized many a victim into 
premature oldness of mind and body. Every 
city and town have their quota of old men 
who gave up business and dropped all active 
interests while yet capable and vigorous, who, 
with pathetic acquiescence, allowed themselves 
to be relegated to Old-Agedom, simply be- 
cause the years had made a certain tally 
against them. The attitude of adult children 
toward their parents is not infrequently one 
of gross injustice, solely because of an erro- 
neous estimate of the weight of years. When 
their parents reach the age of about sixty, 
some children, from a sense of duty or be- 
cause of loving solicitude, assume the attitude 
of guardians toward them. " Father " or 

[4] 



OLD-AGE BUGABOOS 

" Mother " is then considered too old to have 
good judgment in business affairs or to bear 
responsibilities and, sometimes, even to know 
what he or she wants to wear, eat or say. 

Judging by our fear of years and our sub- 
servience to them, it would seem as if they 
have some occult control over our lives 
against which it is useless to struggle. For 
an allotted period — during youth and early 
maturity — the nature of this control is gra- 
cious, but, at a certain prescribed date, it 
becomes strangely malevolent. Did such 
fatalistic power inhere in years, we might 
well pray to die young; but, fortunately, :'| 
does not. 

True, our birthdays recur with unfailing 
persistency and the years accumulate on every 
one's record with never a slip — seven, seven- 
teen, seven times seven, seventy — but birth- 
days at worst can only indicate traditional old 
age; they have no power to induce organic 
old age — the only real oldness. 

Is a man daunted by the new days, new 
years, new joys and new experiences which 

[5] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

the future holds for him when he says, " I 
dread to be old " ? No. The act of living 
attracts us involuntarily. We do not dread 
to live; we desire to live. Love of life lies 
in what to-morrow promises quite as much 
as in what to-day is. Dread of age is dread 
of certain untoward mental and physical con- 
ditions which usually, but not necessarily, 
accompany accumulated years. 

Other old-age bugaboos that stare from 
our mirrors and affright us are gray hair, 
expression-molded features and lines on the 
face. These physical incidents in themselves 
do not even denote that a goodly number of 
years have passed over one's head, much less 
do they denote organic oldness. A severe 
shock to the nervous system may turn one's 
hair white in a single night. Sometimes with- 
out any discernible cause the hair turns gray 
before a person is out of his teens. Lines on 
the face are the record of mental stress and 
struggle; anxiety, grief, worry, irritability, 
self-depreciation, and even intense thought 
lead to the contraction of the muscles which 
[6] 



OLD-AGE BUGABOOS 

causes wrinkles. Tennyson is scientific as well 
as poetic when he speaks of the " straightened 
forehead of the fool." The features are 
molded and informed not by years, but by 
experience and emotion. Sometimes the work 
of these invisible artists is beautifying, 
sometimes disfiguring; sometimes they work 
swiftly, again they dally and idle for long 
periods. 

When a man pulls himself together and, 
rising from his chair with an effort, says, " I 
feel pretty old to-day " ; he does not mean 
that he realizes there is an additional line or 
a new carving on his face, or that his hair has 
taken on a grayer tinge. Rather, he is con- 
scious of lowered vitality, or loss of elasticity, 
or of the absence of the lightness of spirit 
which gave zest to his young days. 

Another old-age bugaboo — a very minor 
one — that sometimes intimidates the inexpe- 
rienced, is experience. Wisdom seems old 
to the callow youth, but this bugaboo is 
the merest wraith imaginable; a moment's 
thought dispels it. We all know that oldness 

[7] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

is not necessarily concomitant with extensive 
knowledge and varied experience. Measured 
in thought and feeling, in accomplishment, in 
travel and acquaintance with different nations 
and different phases of life, some people live 
more in the first thirty years of their lives 
than some whole families live in several 
generations. 

Other old-age bugaboos — literally " mere 
figments of the mind " — are pessimistic the- 
ories concerning life: such, for instance, as 
Max Nordau's, where the genius, the criminal 
and the foolish are alike theorized into de- 
generacy. Without doubt, pessimism inocu- 
lates not a few susceptible people with the 
mental virus of old age. The effect of mental 
contagion plus personal timidity is seen in 
the prevalent subservience to social opinion. 
For a man to celebrate his fiftieth or even his 
fortieth birthday by acting as young as he 
feels — if he be blest with a good liver and a 
sense of humor — for him to be just himself in 
outward expression without conventional re- 
serve or hypocrisy or affectation, requires a 
[8] 



OLD-AGE BUGABOOS 

degree of individuality to which only a com- 
paratively small number of persons have yet 
attained. 

How often an old-appearing person de- 
clares, " I'm just as young in my heart as I 
ever was! " Why, then, does not he or she 
live up to such youthfulness of heart? Gen- 
erally, there is no real obstacle to hinder. The 
obstacle that seems insurmountable to all save 
those who have seen " The Gleam " is, as 
Edward Bellamy puts it, " the blinding, bind- 
ing influence of conventionality, tradition and 
prejudice." 

Madame Grundy might point the finger of 
ridicule at any who dared to disregard the 
Take Notice sign that reads, " Conform to 
Custom." The majority of people are un- 
consciously afraid of what this satiric old 
lady might say should they venture from 
conventional moorings. There is, in reality, 
no valid reason for such deferential timidity. 
Madame Grundy is now, as she was when the 
playwright, Morton, created her, over a cen- 
tury ago, an arbitress of social destinies who 

[9] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

herself never appears on the stage. It was 
Dame Ashfield's projected imagination that 
first made, " What will Mrs. Grundy say? " 
a matter of importance ; and it is our projected 
imagination and our cowardice that enthrone 
her to-day. Her sway is wholly dependent 
upon the homage paid to her by individuals. 
As soon as a person ceases to cower and 
cringe, her power over his life ceases. More- 
over, let a person make a declaration of inde- 
pendence, act for himself and succeed, then 
Madame Grundy and all her train will hasten 
to pay him the high compliment of imitation. 
No other cause would they espouse more 
heartily than that of successful venture in the 
art of postponing oldness. 

Let us, then, put by the " garments of 
make-believe. " Let us have done with self- 
deceptions and slavery to bugaboos. Let us 
rid ourselves of useless fears and agonies of 
spirit, and without prejudice seek to find a 
way to postpone the advent of organic old age 
than which nothing is more undesired and 
unlovely. 

[10] 



"I met a man the other day who 
owned to seven-and-seventy-years, and 
such was his boyishness, that I was 
almost surprised into feeling old my- 
self, in comparison with him. In 
short, my young friends, this whole 
affair of old age, about which you 
hear so much talk, is a canard and 
a humbug. . . . Fools, and persons 
who take themselves seriously, are 
aged at forty; but so are they at any 
time. We need not consider them. 
Old age, in plain words, is a defect — 
a piece of moral or intellectual obliquity 
— and its source is to be sought, not 
in years, but in the temperament and 
character, congenital and acquired, of 
the individual." — Julian Hawthorne. 

** Cling to your youth. It is the 
artist's stock in trade. Don't give up 
that you are aging and you won't 
age." — Robert Louis Stevenson. 



II 

THE TENDENCY OF THE TIMES 

In all reforms a few path-blazers lead the wa^ 
and show the possibilities. The conservative, 
the doubting, the timid, and those of little 
faith hang back until the path becomes an 
accepted thoroughfare; then they gradually 
try walking in it. 

The reform in the conduct of personal life 
which shall render people young at seventy, 
instead of old at forty, will prove no exception 
to the general rule. Some sturdy pioneers 
have already taken up and proven claims to 
prolonged youngness. By their accomplish- 
ment, they have established a precedent and 
made valuable records. Those of us who 
[13] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

have sufficient individuality to do so can fol- 
low their lead and substantiate like claims. 

That those conditions which mark a man 
as in his prime are occasionally maintained 
long beyond the date that old age customarily 
brands its victims, cannot be denied by even 
the most skeptical conservative. Among 
those whose lives attest this possible retention 
of mental and physical power are Goethe, 
who was a " great child " — not childish but 
childlike — at eighty-three; Tennyson writing 
the immortal lines, " Crossing the Bar," when 
he was past eighty; Thiers, the French repub- 
lic's Washington, proving his country's savior 
when he was over four-score years wise; 
Chevreul, the French chemist, who was a vig- 
orous worker until his death at one hundred 
and three years ; John Wesley, who was " top- 
full of vigor " until his death at eighty-six, 
and who said, when he was eighty-two, " I am 
a wonder to myself. It is now twelve years 
since I have felt any such sensation as 
fatigue"; Pope Leo XIIL, "elected to the 
Roman seat at seventy and making his will 

[i.4l 



THE TENDENCY OF THE TIMES 

felt in every nook and corner of the civilized 
world for a quarter of a century thereafter " ; 
Mrs. Gilbert, cheerily playing a leading role 
on the metropolitan stage until, at eighty-five, 
death loosed the harness; Cooper, the English 
artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy 
for sixty-seven consecutive years, and of whose 
pictures, presented when he was ninety-seven, 
the critics said, " they show the painter's 
mastery and the unimpaired virility of his 
brush"; Julia Ward Howe and Susan B. 
Anthony, addressing large audiences on re- 
form measures after more than eighty years 
of life experience. Miss Anthony said, when 
she was eighty-five years young : " Before I 
leave home (Rochester, N. Y.) for the Port- 
land Fair, I must arrange the birthday sur- 
prise party for an old lady who lives near me. 
She's ninety- four." 

Longevity, in and of itself, is by no means 
always desirable. Life may become only a 
kind of vegetative existence, sans vigor, sans 
feeling, sans intelligence. The foregoing 
records are not. however, merely records of 

[15] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

longevity. They are records of the retention 
of power, of mental and physical activity, and 
of a live participation in the vital interests of 
the day. 

The lists of those who have given personal 
demonstration of essential youngness at 
seventy and more years of age might be mul- 
tiplied, such is the abundance of data. The 
current press frequently contains such para- 
graphs as : — 

" Harper and Brothers announce the seven- 
tieth edition of ' The Mechanics and Engi- 
neers' Pocket Book,' by Charles H. Haswell. 
Mr. Haswell has passed his ninety-fifth birth- 
day. He is, however, still in active life, car- 
ries himself erect, dresses most fastidiously, 
and usually wears a carnation in his button- 
hole." 

" Mrs. Frances Alexander is in her ninety- 
third year and has just translated from the 
Italian more than one hundred and twenty 
miracle stories, which are published by 
Messrs. Little, Brown and Company." 

" Miss Florence Nightingale celebrated 
[16] 



THE TENDENCY OF THE TIMES 

her eighty-fourth birthday last month. Her 
life has been one of continued effort, mental 
and physical. Up to the present day she has 
been constantly at work." 

" Mrs. Freeman, of Redbank, Pa., who 
was born October 4, 1793, is, indeed, a re- 
markable old lady. . . . We found 
Mrs. Freeman and her eighty-two years' old 
son about a quarter of a mile from their 
house. To attain to the extreme age of one 
hundred and twelve years and still retain one's 
mental faculties and physical vigor is an 
achievement that falls to the lot of very few. 
Mrs. Freeman's sight is good and she does 
not use glasses. Every day, except in ex- 
tremes of weather, she may be seen trudging 
about the hillsides near her home. In summer 
she spades and tills a good-sized garden." 

This ever increasing amount of irrefutable 
evidence which proves that physical and men- 
tal vigor can be retained to the ninth and 
tenth decade of life is, doubtless, partly the 
cause of the noticeable change that has taken 
place in public sentiment regarding age 

[17] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

boundaries. Certain it is, that during the last 
few years public sentiment has been grow- 
ing decidedly in favor of extending these 
boundaries. 

Thirty years ago, nearly all novelists pic- 
tured their heroines as specimens of " budding 
womanhood." They gave sixteen and eight- 
een years as the prime of feminine attract- 
iveness. If one of their women characters 
were not married by the time that she was 
twenty-one or, at latest, twenty-three, she vir- 
tually was laid upon the matrimonial table 
with never an advocate to offer a resolution 
for her further consideration. 

Formerly, in real life, an unmarried girl 
twenty-five years of age received the unhon- 
orary degree of " Old Maid." Popularly 
interpreted, this meant old and unlovable at 
twenty-five — too old to hope ever to awaken 
love in the heart of any man. 

In recent works of fiction, the heroine in 

her teens has become almost obsolete. In 

her stead appear girls and women of widely 

differing ages; the majority are between 

[18] 



THE TENDENCY OF THE TIMES 

twenty-two and thirty years of age. In some 
instances women with thirty-eight and forty 
years to their credit have been set forth as 
the central figure in a successful novel, nota- 
bly, Mrs. Faulkner in " The Choir Invisible." 

To-day, in real life, a girl only twenty-five 
years old is somewhat young to receive the 
most favorable considerations in the matri- 
monial lists. Statistics of the last decade 
show that the marrying age that is now most 
in vogue with women is twenty-nine. 

Popular " Bachelor Maids " have sup- 
planted unpopular " Old Maids." What sig- 
nificant changes, personally and socially, does 
the happier term imply! The "Bachelor 
Maid " is independent, up-to-date, charming. 
Her degree does not mean social ostracism 
on account of age. On the contrary, the 
self-possession, the experience, the awakened 
sympathy, and the enrichment of mind which 
are the happy bestowment of the few years 
between sixteen and twenty-five or thirty, give 
her distinctive advantage, socially, over the 
immaturity of her sixteen years' old sister. 

[19] 



SEVENTY. YEARS YOUNG 

The fact that the " Bachelor Maid " is not 
married is no more placed to her discredit or 
counted against her attractiveness, to-day, 
than is the same single state put on the debit 
side of her bachelor brother's social account. 

It went without saying, formerly, that a 
woman who was a grandmother was an " old 
woman," or, at best, " a nice old lady." The 
proverbial chimney-corner chair, or some un- 
obtrusive position — such as that of general 
household helper — was tacitly conceded to be 
her legitimate place. To-day, instead of being 
retired or of becoming second-grade helpers, 
grandmothers are realizing that they are 
equipped to stand at the helm and steer. They 
are directors of homes, of business enter- 
prises, of women's clubs. They are society 
dictators, and even stars in grand and comic 
opera. 

The fact that a woman is a grandmother 
or a great-grandmother does not deter her 
from taking a four years' course of prescribed 
study, mastering a foreign language, being a 
member of a physical culture class or a dan- 

[20] 



THE TENDENCY OF THE TIMES 

cing class, studying music, organizing a relief 
association, going into commercial life, 
financing large industrial enterprises, writing 
scientific and popular books, or taking a trip 
around the world. Indeed, it is quite the 
popular thing for grandmothers to " im- 
prove " themselves in such fashion. 

What woman is there, rich in the expe- 
rience of many years of growth and accom- 
plishment, who will not sympathize with the 
feeling expressed by Mrs. Antoinette Brown 
Blackwell at a meeting of The Woman's Pro- 
fessional League of New York City? The 
subject for the day's discussion was " Prog- 
ress." Mrs. Blackwell — the first woman reg- 
ularly ordained as a minister in this country — 
was one of the speakers. A preceding 
speaker had exhibited a foot-stove, such as 
in more primitive days used to be carried to 
church to keep the feet warm. When Mrs. 
Blackwell rose, she said: " I have been made 
to feel to-day as if I were my own great- 
grandmother! I used to carry one of those 
little * foot-warmers.' So, you see, I have 

[21] ' 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

belonged to a period of society whose fashions 
are to-day historical curiosities; but, notwith- 
standing this previous participation in a life 
now quite obsolete, I feel that I am also a 
vital part of this present wonderful age of 
progress. I am in hearty accord with the 
purpose of this organization of women. Am 
I not a ' feature ' on to-day's programme ? 
Can you not understand, then, how the sight 
of that little foot-stove takes me generations 
backward from my present life and interests, 
and makes me feel as if I were my own great- 
grandmother? " 

May not an exceptional woman who lives 
long enough to be her own great-grand- 
mother, and who is still vigorous in interest, 
sympathy and action, be the exemplar of many 
fortunate women in generations to come? 
The tendency of the times points that way. 



[22] 



" Hear, O my son, and receive my 
saying; 
And the years of thy life shall be 
many. 
" I have taught thee in the way of 

wisdom " 

— Proverbs iv, I o- 1 1 . 

" For by me thy days shall be multi- 
plied, 
And the years of thy life shall be 
increased. " 

— Proverbs ix, 1 1 . 



Ill 



NO " TIME-EXPIRED " MEN 



" This preachment about being seventy years 
young," declared an ultra-orthodox woman, 
" is not only contrary to nature, but it is also 
sacrilegious ! It is like setting an individ- 
ual's petty opinions against divine authority ! 
There is no reason for doubting that the 
Biblical allotment of ' three-score years and 
ten/ for the average length of man's life, is 
a divine ordinance as much as anything else 
in the Bible is." 

It takes a long hark back to the days of 
superstition and religious bigotry, when to 
neglect and scourge the body were deemed 
essential to the salvation of the soul, to under- 

[25] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

stand how anybody in this progressive twen- 
tieth century can be troubled in spirit by such 
self-torturing questions. Atavism must be the 
explanation. Strange, too, that so many per- 
sons are mistaken regarding this personal bit 
of Biblical lore. Even Mark Twain made 
this statement at his seventieth birthday ban- 
quet: " Three-score years and ten — it is the 
scriptural statute of limitation. After that 
you owe no active duties ; for you, the strenu- 
ous life is over. You are a ' Time-Expired ' 
man, to use Kipling's military phrase." 

The Bible does not admonish man to be 
prepared for a three-score years and ten limit 
to earthly existence; it does not suggest that 
it would be wise to chloroform people or to 
put them out of commission at that age; it 
does not teach that to conduct one's life so 
that one shall be young, practically, at seventy 
years is contrary to divine or to psychologic 
law. The Ninetieth Psalm is not prophetic; 
it is " A prayer of Moses, the man of God." 
In it he makes this statement to the Lord 
concerning his own people and his own time : 

[26] 



NO "TIME-EXPIRED" MEN 

"The days of our years are threescore years and ten, 
Or even by reason of strength fourscore years." 

Moses does not say that the years of the 
following generations shall be so limited, or 
that they ought to be. Simply that the years 
of his own people are thus and so. One can 
but wonder why mankind has not chosen the 
leader's life, instead of the lives of those who 
were led, as a standard for the span of their 
preordained life. The Biblical authority re- 
garding Moses' age is, " He was an hundred 
and twenty years old when he died;" and, 
" his eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
abated." 

And note the words of Isaiah. Isaiah does 
not make statements about the existing condi- 
tions of his own time. He speaks in the future 
tense; he prophesies, saying, " The spirit of 
the Lord is upon me." Part of this hopeful 
forecast of the good times that are in store for 
the righteous is that " the child shall die an 
hundred years old." 

The expression, " a child an hundred years 
old," is, of course, figurative. A child in 

[27] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

literal definition is a person who has lived 
only a few years — any number less than ma- 
turity. We outgrow the especially distinguish- 
ing marks of childhood during life's first 
score of years. The physical body reaches 
man's or woman's stature. Mentally, one 
becomes accustomed to the universe and all 
the marvels thereof. The brain having been 
continuously and variously acted upon by ex- 
ternal environments becomes habituated to 
such action. The individual loses the charm 
of childhood's wonderment. At twenty he 
takes the perpetual miracles of daily life — 
birth, death, day and night, the sun, moon, 
the seasons, the life of a bee, and the growth 
of a blade of grass — as a matter of course, 
unfortunately much as middle-aged and eld- 
erly people do. 

May not " a child an hundred years old " 
be prescient words that foretell to what life 
may eventually attain when men better under- 
stand and obey the laws of their being? May 
they not imply that it is within man's ability 
so to conserve and economically utilize his 

[28] 



NO "TIME-EXPIRED" MEN 

vital energy that he may live an hundred years 
of rich, abounding life, that he may appro- 
priate all the wealth of experience that those 
years yield, and yet remain in spiritual atti- 
tude a child? May he not, in very truth, be 
childlike, i.e., interested, enthusiastic, genuine, 
spontaneous, receptive of mind and sympa- 
thetic of heart? May he not be a child in 
normal physical manifestations, i.e., be health- 
ful, sturdy, thoroughly alive and alert; free, 
flexible, mobile in every movement ; harmoni- 
ous and joyous in expression? 

It would be no more wonderful for man 
thus to control the building forces of his brain 
and body, through an understanding of their 
operative laws, than it is wonderful that, 
through a partial mastery of certain laws of 
physics, he controls the forces swirling around 
the world sufficiently to speak across eighteen 
hundred miles of ocean without a material 
medium for the transmission of vibrations. 



[29] 



C I go to concert, party, ball — what 

profit is in these? 
I sit alone against the wall and strive 

to look at ease. 
The incense that is mine by right 

they burn before her shrine; 
And that's because I'm seventeen 
and she is forty-nine.' ' 

— Rudyard Kipling. 

■"At sixty-two life has begun; 

At seventy-three begin once more; 
Fly swifter as thou near'st the sun, 
And brighter shine at eighty-four. 
At ninety-five 
Shouldst thou arrive, 
Still wait on God, and work and 
thrive." 

—0 ] liver Wendell Holmes, 



IV 

CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS 

The regular reckoning of birthdays makes 
for old age. What good fortune it would be 
if people in general were to forget the year 
of their birth, as they forget the incidents of 
the first years of their lives. Many persons 
who are now staidly and uninterestingly se- 
date would be quite different and younger in 
expression if they were uncertain whether 
twenty or sixty years had slipped by since 
they were born. 

Civilized man cannot entirely lose this per- 
sonal reckoning with his own past, but he can 
refuse to dwell on the figures of his life as they 
climb up. It is quite possible to keep only 
an indifferent tally on them — one subject to 

[33] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

shrinkage. Why, after all, are the years of 
one's life given such importance? If you are 
my friend, does it matter to me in what year 
you were born? Do I love you because of 
your age, or because of what you yourself are ? 
If you are a stranger and have a message for 
my spirit, is your year record of any more in- 
terest to me than is your height or weight rec- 
ord? Does it make any difference whether 
Emerson was twenty-three or sixty-three when 
he wrote "The Over-Soul"? Were Elizabeth 
Barrett and Robert Browning less ideal types 
of lovers because she was thirty-nine and he 
was thirty-three when they first met? Did it 
signify to the hundreds of wounded soldiers 
ministered to by the " Good Gray Poet " in 
what year he was born? Does the mere inci- 
dent of age by itself ever increase or decrease 
the area of sympathy between two men or two 
women ? Do we not sometimes cordially dis- 
like people of our own age, and are we not 
often devotedly attached to people of an age 
much greater or less than our own? It is not 
the age element, primarily, but the content of 

[34] 



CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS 

a person's being, plus his or her attractiveness 
or unattractiveness in personal expression, 
that endears or repels in human commerce. 

Birthday records have a demoralizing influ- 
ence on our mental attitude toward ourselves. 
We feel as young, as full of life and enthusi- 
asm as we ever did; but a birthday announces 
that we have lived twenty-eight or forty or 
fifty-five years. Some figure — according to 
our preconceived ideas of propriety — means 
for us a parting of the ways. It is time to 
" settle down " ; so we do it, mentally and 
physically. Whoever so settles and allows 
daily life to degenerate into dull routine opens 
wide the door to old age. 

William Dean Howells says, " Whatever 
is established is sacred — to those who do not 
think." Lack of thought, lack of sympathy 
with the other person's viewpoint must be the 
explanation of the sacred atmosphere with 
which many people, sentimental and prosaic, 
surround birthdays, especially the birthdays of 
those advanced in years. Would it not be con- 
siderate to omit progressive birthday parties? 

[35] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

Does not the secret pain they cause outweigh 
any transient pleasure they may give? Can 
any alive adult be made happier by being 
reminded every twelve months of his or her 
increasing age? 

If friends desire to give a dear one a pres- 
ent, or to burn candles in that one's honor, 
why, let it be done occasionally, not on a 
stated occasion — the birth anniversary. Cer- 
tainly, the custom of rating ourselves and 
others on Life's lists according to the year in 
which each happened to be born is one from 
which no advantage accrues and, often, much 
disadvantage. Such rating is sometimes un- 
kind to the point of cruelty. 

A person of capable mind and vigorous 
body must feel much as does an innocent per- 
son imprisoned for crime, when he is con- 
fronted with age statistics that debar him 
from being a candidate for official, political, 
professional, clerical or commercial recogni- 
tion. 

There is no equity in a personal rating 
based on years. " Some are old in heart at 

[36] 



CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS 

forty, and some are young at eighty," said 
Charles Reade. The same wide latitude must 
be allowed to mental and physical abilities. 
Violent exercise might prove dangerous to 
most men after the age of sixty, but a man now 
eighty-four years of age has taught boxing in 
New York City for the last half century and 
" is still actively following his profession." 
He declares that he finds that exercise exhil- 
arating to mind and body. William Cullen 
Bryant, writing " Thanatopsis " at nineteen 
years of age, had a mental grasp far beyond 
the reach of many people at any age ; making 
a standing jump of several feet when he was 
sixty-three, he was younger than the average 
man of half that number of years; translating 
the " Iliad " at seventy-six, he was not old 
in. the true sense of the word. 

When birthday records are clearly such 
unreliable standards of measurement of man's 
physical condition, intellectual abilities and 
personal attractiveness, is it not strange that 
the great majority of people revert to them 
so persistently? From the cradle to one's 

[37] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

epitaph, the years of one's life are naggingly 
flaunted before one. If a man marries or dies, 
commits a crime or founds a hospital, one of 
the first questions is, " How old is he? " Pos- 
sibly the emphasis put upon years by those 
dealing with young children is largely the 
cause for the unwarranted influence that years 
have over adult minds. 

Who has not been guilty of magnifying 
the importance of years to young children? 
It is the exceptional one-in-a-thousand adult 
who, in " making conversation " with children 
or in trying to be " nice " to them, does not 
fall back on the trite questions, " What is 
your name?" and "How old are you?" 
While from parents, grandparents, aunts and 
cousins, a little child is ever and again hear- 
ing about its age. 

Psychology teaches that, " According as a 
function receives daily exercise or not, the 
man becomes a different kind of being later in 
life." The habit of so continuously calling a 
child's attention to its age tends to ingrain deep 
among the first and most enduring impres- 

[38] 



CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS 

sions on the " brain-stuff " a wrong estimate 
of the importance of years, per se; moreover, 
its direct influence on the child may be bad — 
negatively so on a child of self-assertive tend- 
encies, and positively so on a child of a timid, 
sensitive nature. 

A boy of self-assertive tendencies often 
comes to look upon his " so many years old " 
as a personal aggrandizement. Such a little 
fellow will boast, " Vm seven years old, and 
Bobbie's only six!" He takes credit to 
himself for his years as something for which 
he deserves reward or praise. 

To the shy, backward child, the conscious- 
ness of his accumulating years is shame. He 
shrinks before them, humiliated. His sensi- 
tive spirit quivers under such accusations as, 
"" He is small for his age, isn't he? " or, " He 
hasn't grown an inch in two years ! " Or, 
"Ten years old! Is it possible! Why, he 
isn't any taller than my Harold, who is only 
eight!" If a child has not gone through 
certain books at a certain age, in accordance 
with the prescribed grind, he is known at 

[39] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

school as " not very bright " or u dull " or 
" stupid "; and at home receives, at best, in- 
dulgent pity. All this is immeasurably 
wrong. Most children have intermittent pe- 
riods of growth, mental and physical. Because 
a longer time than is usual happens to inter- 
vene between some of these periods in the 
development of some children, there is no war- 
rant for making them self-conscious and mis- 
erable by taunting them about their age. A 
child who is not up to the average expectancy 
in development at a certain age may be ahead 
of it three or four years later. Slow develop- 
ment is not the sign of final under-develop- 
ment any more than youthful precocity is the 
sign of adult mental preeminence. 

Seventy years old, not young, people are 
given to harping tediously on their age — not 
infrequently in a boastful spirit. Is not such 
tiresome iteration, also due, at least partly, 
to the fact that from babyhood up their atten- 
tion has been too much focused on the mere 
time measurement of life? Have not birth- 
day records been a potent factor in leading 

[40] 



CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS 

them to think about the years they have lived 
and the years they hope to live, to the gradual 
exclusion of thinking about living any year 
or day in the most helpful and healthful man- 
ner? The vital question concerning any man 
at any age is, What is he doing with his life? 
not, In what year was he born? 

Birthdays, if recognized at all, should be 
celebrated in a similar manner to the celebra- 
tion of Christmas, when it is spiritual in char- 
acter — that is, in the spirit of love and of 
thankfulness for our Saviour's life-lesson. 
We do not truly celebrate any birthday unless 
we rejoice because of what the love of and for 
that child, parent, brother, sister, husband, 
wife or friend means to us; otherwise, such 
celebrations are merely unthinking adherence 
to an established custom. 

Certain young women in society, who are 
perennially " past twenty-two," and who step 
with graceful agility from out their own set 
when it is thinned out by Cupid's arrows into 
the ranks of the next younger set, inaugurate 
a fashion that is worthy of universal adoption. 

[41] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

All women who have passed their thirtieth 
birthday, and most men who have passed their 
fortieth, wish secretly, if not avowedly, that 
they could stop the hands on life's dial. And 
why should they not? Why should they not 
follow the example of the charming French- 
woman who " forgot to remember her birth- 
days"? If there must be some specific nu- 
meral attached to the day on which one's 
family and friends especially express their 
gladness because one was born, why not let 
each adult choose a figure to his or her liking 
and then live up to it, or, more probably, 
down to it? As a fascinating young grand- 
mother wrote to her husband on a birthday 
spent apart from him, " Dear, to-day I'm 
having another thirty-third birthday." 

Often a birthday sets a man to philoso- 
phizing in this vein: " Well, I'm forty-eight, 
or fifty-two! There ought to be fifteen or 
twenty years more of work in me. I must 
make the most of them and try to get ahead 
somewhat more." Frankly interpreted, these 
words mean: " Old age is after me! I must 

[42] 



CONCERNING BIRTHDAYS 

hurry up and make all the money I can before 
it overtakes me." (It makes no difference in 
his mental attitude if he already possesses 
more than enough for comfort and ease.) " I 
must discount the present and prepare for the 
future. I cannot afford to give any time to 
the enjoyment of the passing hour," This is 
relinquishing two birds in the hand for an 
uncertain one in the bush. 

Courageously to challenge the present day 
to yield us its fullest measure of growth and 
happiness is to make the best, as well as the 
11 most," of all the years of one's life. Res- 
olutely to refuse even in one's secret thoughts 
to set an age limit to one's ability to work and 
to enjoy is far-seeing wisdom — the wisdom 
that safeguards us from old-age habits. 



[43] 



" Would you know the secret of the 
far-famed elixir of life, perpetual youth? 
It is versatility — the power to coax and 
capture the new. The ever young 
means the ever new." — "Some Philos- 
ophy of the Hermetics. ' ' 

" The greatest loss any person can 
sustain is that of his childhood. So 
long as the child survives in the man he 
is living, but when that is gone he is 
no better than a mummy-case. A 
childlike man is far better than an old- 
manny boy." — W. W. Story. 



OLD AGE A CONDITION 

Father Time is, at worst, only " accessory 
to the crime " of killing our youth when we 
are two- or three-score or a few more years of 
age. It is the way in which the years are lived 
which determines whether their effect on any 
individual shall be for growth and health, or 
for stagnation and death. After we say 
good-by to our 'teens the impress of the years 
upon us is generally of a somewhat deadening 
and destructive nature, and becomes ever 
more and more so, as the years pile up against 
us. But it is possible so to live that their 
impress on our lives shall be as it was on 
Agassiz's life, of whom David Starr Jordan 
says: "When Agassiz died, 'the best friend 

[47] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

that ever student had,' the students of Har- 
vard laid a wreath of laurel on his bier, and 
their manly voices sang a requiem, for he had 
been a student all his life long, and when he 
died he was younger than any of them." 

All of us instinctively shrink from decrepi- 
tude, infirmity, stiffness of body, loss of facul- 
ties, chronic invalidism. And well we may, 
for these are essential attributes of the condi- 
tion called old age. Some of the more subtle 
attributes are setness of mind, chronic garrul- 
ousness, avarice, self-centeredness, loss of 
attention and a creeping paralysis of the 
affections. 

It makes no difference at what calendar 
record this deteriorating condition com- 
mences, whether it be at twenty-five or sev- 
enty-five years of age; it, in itself, is genuine 
oldness. 

Such deterioration means that a person has 
not the ability, or perchance the inclination, 
to act with unconscious spontaneity as he once 
did. He who is, in very truth, old, has lost 
much of his physical vigor and rebound, his 

[48] 



OLD AGE A CONDITION 

enthusiasm has waned, his interests have nar- 
rowed and become stale, and his affections 
have become anaemic. 

Professor Elie Metchnikoff, who is one of 
the most authoritative biologists of the pres- 
ent time, says that old age is a disease in the 
literal sense of the word, and that it may be 
combated as any other disease is; that it 
belongs to the group of disease known as 
" atrophies," and that " senile atrophy " (old 
age) " is the combination of many lesser 
atrophies." 

Specifically considered oldness means mus- 
cular setness, immobility; youngness means 
muscular freedom, mobility. Oldness means 
weak, flaccid muscles ; youngness means strong, 
firm muscles. Oldness means a stiffness of 
joints as contrasted with the flexibility of 
" supple-jointed " youngness. Oldness means 
a stooped or stiff attitude as contrasted with 
the erect, pliant attitude of youngness. Old- 
ness means inertness, heaviness of movement, 
as contrasted with the alertness and buoyancy 
of youth. 

[49] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

To be old in thought and feeling is to be 
dull, blase, apprehensive, calculating. To be 
spiritually young is to be fresh in interest, 
light of heart, trustful. To be old is to be 
conservative, timid, reiterative. To be young 
is to be venturesome, courageous, versatile. 
To be old is to be fogified, opinionated, sel- 
fish, unloving. To be young is to be eager, 
receptive, generous, loving. Oldness means 
a preference for sameness, monotony, the 
established order — good or bad — as con- 
trasted with change, reform, innovations. It 
means a despondent, harking-back mental 
habit as contrasted with the just-be-glad spirit 
of expectant youth. 

Whoever will, may earn a long postpone- 
ment of these dire old-age conditions. The 
word " earn " is used advisedly. There is no 
royal road, no purchasable right of way to 
the El Dorado of Seventy Years Young. All 
who there arrive must work their way. Not 
only is " eternal vigilance " necessary, but 
eternal interest and eternal activity, mental 
and physical. 

[So] 



OLD AGE A CONDITION 

" There is no danger so great, so universal, 
as mental arrest. Decadence is sure to fol- 
low."* Only by daily harmonious use of all 
of one's being — faculties, functions, senses, 
muscles — can one earn the right to prolonged 
possession of them. Everywhere, from the 
jelly-fish to man, activity signifies life. Stag- 
nant water is foul. Non-use or under-use of a 
faculty or a muscle causes deterioration, atro- 
phy, old age. Excess of activity, or the wrong 
use of any part of the organism, depletes, 
weakens, ages. 

Those who would live long and be young, 
then, should avoid : ( i ) Under-activity — easy 
indolence of mind, dulled sensibilities and in- 
ert physical expression. (2) Over-activity — 
intellectual, emotional and physical stress con- 
tinued to the point of exhaustion. (3) Per- 
verted activity — in any of the well-known 
ways. 

In order that we may be resistant to old-age 
disease, the wear and tear of daily life must 
be made good by new blood — physical re- 

* Dr. G. Stanley Hall, Chautauqua Herald, August 4th, 1 905. 

[Si] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

building — and by new and ever liner control 
of the spiritual energies. The energy re- 
ceived through rest and the vital processes 
must be equivalent to that expended in mental, 
emotional and physical activity. Dr. W. G. 
Hammond, former Surgeon-General of the 
United States Army, says, " If such equilib- 
rium could be established, there is no physio- 
logical reason why man should not live on 
indefinitely." A millenium condition, say 
you ! Not possible in the hurry-up times of 
the twentieth century! Every recognized 
good is approximately possible, right here and 
now. 

Arthur McFarlane, in his interesting arti- 
cle, " Prolonging the Prime of Life,"* 
says : — 

" Professor Metchnikoff, who describes 
himself as ' an optimist on scientific grounds/ 
believes that man does not live the natural 
span of life, that the score of years now al- 
lotted to the state of ' middle age ' should, 
and will be in the not distant future, two-, 

*McClure'$ Magazine, September, 1905. 

[52] 



OLD AGE A CONDITION 

three-, or four-score. This is modern science 
returning to the ' hundred and forty years ' 
which Buffon set down as man's natural life 
from the logic and evidence of comparative 
zoology." 

The vital balance between the day's dam- 
age and the day's repair will not be struck off 
by any one single effort. There must be a 
growing series of penny savings in the daily 
output and of penny gains in the daily replen- 
ishment of one's physical capital, in order to 
make such a balance even approximately pos- 
sible. Every time we gain a wiser, a more 
economical guidance of our nervous energy 
in the performance of any physical act, as 
walking; every time we stimulate an inactive 
organ, as a sluggish, melancholic liver by ex- 
ercise; every time we make a better condition 
for a restorative process, as deep breathing; 
every time we conjure mental serenity by the 
physical expression of that state, as in relax- 
ing the jaw when one is impatient; every time 
we shift our mental slides and replace an ugly, 
disheartening picture by a pleasing one; in 
[S3] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

short, every time we use our dynamic will- 
energy toward self-government and health, 
instead of succumbing to the insidious tend- 
ency to deterioration, we are saving and 
making pennies of that wealth which Emer- 
son ranks as first, namely, health. Every ad- 
ditional health-penny lifts a person one re- 
move further from the physical and mental 
bankruptcy of old age. 



[54] 



"In habit and interest we find the 
psychological poles corresponding to 
the lowest and the highest activities 
of the nervous system. . . . 

"The nervous process passes from 
the stage of fresh accumulation to the 
stage of habit by the law of downward 
growth. . . . New relations are in- 
teresting; the nervous growth is 'up- 
ward,' involving higher integrations.'' 
— James Mark Baldwin. 

"A settled, unchangeable, clearly 
foreseeable order of things does not suit 
our constitution. It tends to melan- 
choly and a fatty heart!'' — Henry Van 
Dyke. 



VI 

HABIT AND OLD AGE 

" We must make automatic and habitual, as 
early as possible, as many useful actions as 
we can, and we should guard against the 
growing into ways that are likely to be disad- 
vantageous to us as we would guard against 
the plague."* 

" Growing into ways " — either good or bad 
— is simply being dominated by habit. Some 
habits are advantageous, and some are " dis- 
advantageous " to us. 

As a conserver of nervous energy, the auto- 
matic or habit-way of physical action is highly 

* James's "Psychology." 

[57] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

advantageous. It is in the nature of " ex- 
plaining the obvious " to say that the sover- 
eign control that habit early assumes over 
the multiplicity of our daily acts gives to our 
higher faculties the freedom necessary for 
their best growth and development. Other- 
wise, one's time and energy would be con- 
sumed in the execution of such ordinary acts 
as standing, walking, bathing, dressing and 
eating; while reading, writing, sewing and 
dancing would be overwhelmingly laborious 
and imperfect processes. As it is, habit 
makes the performance of these and innumer- 
able other acts of daily life almost automatic. 
The thinking, willing, loving self gives little 
more than the initial impulse to their execu- 
tion. Obviously, to wish to be free from 
habit's control, in these essential daily acts, 
would be wishing for unbearable burdens; 
but, as Edward Howard Griggs says: " It is 
as necessary that one should be able to break 
the routine of habit for adequate cause as it is 
that one should relegate much of life to the 
* custody of automatism.' ... To trust 

[58] 



HABIT AND OLD AGE 

to the mechanism of habit alone is to invite 
moral atrophy or disaster."* 

As an enslaver of body and brain to the old, 
to the accustomed, the habit-way is most 
" disadvantageous " to us. It is the aging 
way. Unless we are vigilantly on guard we 
shall be caught napping and awake to find 
ourselves habit-bound, prejudiced, set, old. 

Like presumptuous, grasping people, who 
take an ell if they are given an inch, habit is 
ever lying in wait for a chance to monopolize 
the whole domain of man's being. Such ab- 
solute despotism over the whole domain by a 
ruler, who commands excellently well in cer- 
tain minor provinces, would be disastrous in 
the extreme to man's progress and his higher 
possibilities. 

The phrases " good habits " and " bad 
habits " are generally used restrictively. They 
stand sponsor for a certain few well recog- 
nized virtues and vices. A " peculiar habit " 
stands for some glaring mannerism or eccen- 
tricity of expression. Not infrequently, we 

* Griggs's "Moral Education." 

[59] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

hear a person boasting that " he has no bad 
habits," or he may confess to a single, lone 
one. As a matter of fact, the most scrupulous 
and conscientious person doubtless has a 
dozen or more habits that are " disadvan- 
tageous " to him or her — really bad habits. 
Over-conscientiousness is in itself a pernicious 
habit. Many so-called " regular habits " are 
chronic, bad, aging habits. 

Habits include not only our personal cus- 
toms, but our manners, our expressions, and 
our ways of doing things, great and small. 
The way a man sits, stands, walks, the way he 
carries his head and the way his head carries 
his hat; the way he bows, smiles, frowns; the 
way he eats and drinks; the way he ties his 
necktie and unties his shoes; not only the way 
he speaks and acts, but, also, the way he 
refrains from speaking and acting — his inhi- 
bitions — are all habits that tend to fasten 
themselves on him and ever afterwards to 
repeat themselves as much as does the habit 
of drink tend to enslave a man — once let it 
get hold of him. 

[60] 



HABIT AND OLD AGE 

Behind all external habits are thought and 
emotion habits — the habit of tick-tack, tick- 
tack thinking; the habit of imaginative, bright 
thinking; of humorous and of dolorous think- 
ing; of profound, comprehensive thinking and 
of narrow, bigoted thinking; of analytic and 
of synthetic thinking; of pessimistic and of 
optimistic thinking. There are habits of 
despondency, surliness, procrastination, gen- 
tleness, hopefulness, ambition, selfishness, as- 
piration, happiness. 

All habits come into being in much the 
same way. The person who is to be blessed 
or cursed by them is usually quite unconscious 
of their birth and growth. Some stimulus 
from the outside world causes a current of 
nerve energy to be carried to the brain over 
nerves of sensation, sight, sound, smell or 
taste. This current makes an impression on 
the brain. What is called a " discharge " 
then takes place ; this means that a current of 
nerve energy goes downward from the brain 
into some of the muscles and vital organs. 
The path this current makes is the beginning 
[61] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

of a habit. The next time that the brain re- 
ceives a similar impression, the nervous dis- 
charge from it to the outlying bodily territory 
will tend to be over the same path that the 
previous discharge took; for that route is the 
easiest, just as it is easier for man number 
two to follow in the footsteps of man number 
one who plowed his way through a deep 
fall of snow, than for man number two to 
make an entirely new path for himself. It 
is still easier for man number three to follow 
the two preceding men, and so on, until soon 
every pedestrian, automatically, takes the 
same path. 

This process of habit-forming which in- 
volves outward stimulus, brain impression 
and motor reaction, is described somewhat 
differently by different psychologists. One 
authority states that the impression on the 
brain " sets up a vibration of nerves and cells; 
and that cells and nerves would repeat pre- 
vious vibrations more easily than make orig- 
inal ones." But it matters not whether actual 
paths are ingrained in the brain substance, or 

[62] 



HABIT AND OLD AGE 

its cells are vibrated without making any such 
record. The fact is incontrovertible that fa- 
cility comes by repetition. Thus are habits 
born. 

Habits of action are, clearly, subject to 
man's volition. A man whose habit it is to 
stand stoop-shouldered, drink beer and use 
slang, can, if he will, stand erect, drink water 
instead of beer and use good English instead 
of perverted. 

With habits of thinking and feeling, it may 
appear to be different; they often seem to be 
insidiously self-operative. We think and feel 
along certain lines for no traceable reason and 
quite against our will. Simply, we so think 
and feel — and " that's the end of it." It may 
be the end of it, but it is not the beginning. 
For thinking and emotional habits originate 
in the same way that a habit of the feet or any 
other part of the body does. 

Thoughts and feelings are not primarily 
self-inducing. They are dependent for their 
first impulse upon some stimulus from the out- 
side world. Something exterior must first 

[63] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

make an appeal to the brain, or some object 
must first arouse the affections. After a line 
of thought has been initiated, or an emotion 
experienced, memory and imagination can re- 
peat them and make them habitual without 
any outside help. 

One awakens in the dead of night when 
darkness and silence shut out all the usual 
brain exciting stimuli and immediately falls 
to pondering a mathematical problem, plan- 
ning a business scheme, or rehearsing some 
distressful event that has occurred — or that 
may never occur. One might plausibly rea- 
son: " If memory and imagination can be the 
exciting causes of such habits, is not the per- 
son who so thinks powerless to protect him- 
self? Who can help remembering what he 
remembers? To try to forget is only to 
remember more vividly." That is true or not, 
according to the forgetting process employed. 
To say that one must forget, must not dwell 
on distressful events and, at the same time, 
mentally to image and rehearse the details 
of the incident that is to be forgotten, only 

[6 4 ] 



HABIT AND OLD AGE 

makes the original impression deeper in the 
memory-wax instead of obliterating or ob- 
scuring it. 

The volitional guidance that shall enable 
us to get somewhat the better of pernicious 
mental habits, will proceed in manner other 
than this. It will rout the undesirable mental 
state not by denial, but by substitution. By a 
push of the will the attention will be directed 
to other subjects than the one that seeks 
monopoly of the thoughts. That is the first 
step; the second is to arouse some degree of 
interest, however reluctant and feeble it may 
be, in the new subject by establishing a motor 
relationship with it. For instance, suppose 
some frightful calamity has deprived me of 
the one person dearest to my life. The shock 
comes with such impelling force, the brain 
impression is so vivid and the tendency to 
its motor reactions is so strong, that the abil- 
ity to respond to anything else beneath the 
stars seems gone. A deadening mental and 
physical apathy settles upon me. Now, mem- 
ory and imagination, uninterrupted and un- 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

checked, would lead me to re-live, over and 
over again, the harrowing details of the 
calamity, and to dwell despondently upon the 
loss sustained, to the exclusion of all other 
thoughts and emotions. Melancholia is but 
a few removes from such reiterative, depress- 
ing mental action. But some friend, or some 
incident, or some chance word, makes me 
aware of my perilous mental condition. My 
will now consciously enters the field against 
memory and imagination. It forces my reluc- 
tant and listless attention elsewhere; perhaps 
to some unfulfilled obligation, to some one's 
necessity which I might relieve, or even to 
some simple household duty. It then re- 
enforces the hold of these subjects upon my 
attention by making me act in relation to 
them. It compels me — albeit much against 
my inclination — to visit the lawyer or agent; 
to contribute to the needs of another by physi- 
cally exerting myself, or to employ my hands 
in household ministering. 

Physical action, the mere objective doing 
of something, is the medicine that often pre- 
[66] 



HABIT AND OLD AGE 

serves the mind's balance in times of great 
emotional stress. The psychological expla- 
nation is that such motor action itself becomes 
a new stimulus to the brain; it diverts the 
nerve energy from its stressful and limited 
territory, and sends it over paths other than 
those established by the shock of sorrow. 
This diversion of the mind's activity brings 
alleviation. Nature's restorative processes 
can now have fair play. Rest, recuperation, 
newness of life follow. Sanity is thus main- 
tained. 

Self-centered, reiterative habits of think- 
ing, whether the subject thought upon be reli- 
gion, reform, chess, sorrow or sin, should be 
fought against with all the strength of one's 
will. In very truth, " that way madness 
lies." Many people instinctively realize this. 
We hear people who perhaps have never given 
a moment's study to the action of the mind 
make such remarks as, " Well ! I simply could 
not stand it! I had to get away! I think 
I should have gone crazy if I had heard that 
over again!" or, "I felt as if I should 

[67] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

scream ! He so insistently said the same thing 
over and over! " 

Reiterative mental processes are more de- 
structive whenever a personal feeling or an 
emotion is involved, but dangerous mental 
stress also results from those of a wholly im- 
personal nature, such as monotonous work. 
The case of a young woman typewriter which 
came under the writer's notice is an illustra- 
tion in point. She received a commission for 
several thousand copies of the same letter to 
be executed as soon as possible. Great as 
was her desire to do the work speedily, she 
found each day that after carrying the same 
sentences in her mind quite a number of times, 
it was absolutely imperative to have mental 
change, to read, or talk, or get into the open 
air, or even to typewrite something else. In 
describing the effect of the ceaseless mental 
repetition of the same words, she pathetically 
said, " It was simply horrible! I could not 
endure it! " 

This discussion of mental states, of habits 
— their coming and possible overcoming — 
[68] 



HABIT AND OLD AGE 

may seem far afield and quite unrelated to the 
main theme of this book. It is not, however, 
a by-the-way digression. The conclusion 
forced upon us by the study of the mind's 
action, pushed a step farther, leads logically 
to the way suggested in the following chap- 
ters for retaining youngness of mind and 
body. 

If too exclusive concentration upon one line 
of thought, or too dominant usurpation of 
the mental realm by one kind of emotion, will 
produce the abnormal condition of the mind 
called insanity, is it not justifiable to conclude 
that the restriction of the mind to a few lim- 
ited lines of thought, and to a few well-worn 
emotions, which are outwardly manifested in 
nearly the self-same semi-automatic physical 
actions, must inevitably tend to lessen interest 
and mental vigor, to lessen physical strength, 
elasticity and resistance? And is not such 
lessening of powers oldness, or, at least, its 
beginning? 



[6 9 ] 



" There is in every society the dan- 
ger of settling down into fixed forms. 
Hence the need for the perpetual affir- 
mation of the individual will and ideal." 
— Edward Howard Griggs. 

"It is monotony which eats the 
heart out of joy, destroys the buoyancy 
of spirit, and turns hope to ashes; it 
is monotony which saps the vitality 
of the emotions, depletes the energy 
of the will, and finally turns the mir- 
acle of daily existence into dreary com- 
monplace.' ' 

—Hamilton W. Mabie- 



VII 

KEEP OUT OF RUTS 

Keep out of ruts — ruts of thinking, feeling, 
talking, acting, living! That is the physio- 
logical and psychological recipe for prolonged 
youngness. 

Every person who would keep old age at 
bay should seek newness of experience, of 
thought, emotion, environment, association 
and personal expression. He should eagerly 
seek to do old accustomed acts in a new way. 
To do only what it has been our habit to do, 
is to lose the power to do the new. Dr. Hal- 
leck in " Education of the Nervous System " 
says: " The purpose of education is to make 
reactions from impressions numerous and per- 

[73] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

feet." Reactions from impressions are, at 
least, partially voluntary. By responding en- 
thusiastically to new stimuli, we retain the 
power to respond. When a man loses this 
power, when he no longer has zest for growth, 
when he is unwilling to take the initiative in 
behalf of his youth, he joins the ranks of these 
who are marching heedlessly over the smooth, 
broad highway to Old-Agedom. 

" We are as lazy as we dare to be," says 
Emerson. Many of us are too daring in this 
respect for our own safety. We are nega- 
tively good-natured; we are temperamentally 
inclined " to let things slide." We do not 
realize how we jeopardize the very conditions 
that make life prized when we allow our- 
selves to fall into self-indulgent grooves, men- 
tal and physical. The self-complacency that 
prides itself in " taking things easy " may lead 
to degeneracy; for not only is self-activity of 
mind and body essential to growth, but it is 
also essential to the retention of what one 
now possesses. In no other way can one hope 
to hold one's own. Verily, it behooves us 

[74] 



KEEP OUT OF RUTS 

to be interested and to express our interest, 
objectively. 

" One may mope 
Into a shade through thinking, or else drowse 
Into a dreamless sleep and so die off! " 

To yield to the habit of easy acquiescence, 
indifference, lassitude or inertness is gradually 
to paralyze the faculty of effort. Such paraly- 
sis is a sure sign that the years are beginning 
to down the man. The cure — or better, the 
ounce of prevention — is, " Keep the faculty 
of effort alive by giving it a little gratuitous 
exercise every day," as Professor James ad- 
monishes. Dr. Lavender advises in the same 
vein wheh, speaking of a neighbor, he says: 
" He's allowed himself to grow old. Hasn't 
walked down the hill and back in three years. 
. . . For my part, I have made a rule 
about such things, which I commend to you, 
young man : As soon as you feel too old to do 
a thing, DO it!"* 

By " energetic volition " we must keep our- 
selves free from the too restrictive dominance 

* Deland's " The Awakening of Helena Richie." 

[75] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

of habit. Restrictive not only in bodily ac- 
tions, but also in our higher mental processes; 
for, unless we safeguard ourselves by resolute 
will-action in the opposite direction, our 
thoughts and emotions are liable to fall into 
the realm of automatism — practically, to do 
themselves. As Dr. Carpenter says: " Our 
nervous systems have grown to the way in 
which they have been exercised, just as a sheet 
of paper once creased or folded tends to fall 
forever afterward in the same identical folds." 
Man must summon his judgment, will and im- 
agination to the rescue, and protect his future 
against this old-age tendency of the nervous 
system. He must make himself do the new 
act, make himself take the new mental atti- 
tude, make himself listen without prejudice 
to the new doctrine, and make himself not 
oppose the " new-fangled " enterprise because 
it is new. 

Ruts are hazardous to intellectual keenness, 

to spiritual perception and to youngness of 

body. As an unknown writer says: " Variety 

is not only the spice of life; it is a necessary 

f76] 



KEEP OUT OF RUTS 

ingredient. Unbroken monotony is inconsist- 
ent with mental vigor; and the more sensitive 
the mental tissue the more it cries out against 
monotony." 

Change, change is the law of Nature, the 
law of life abundant. To live in the rut of 
dull routine inevitably narrows one's whole 
life and shortens the life of one's youthful- 
ness, if no more. Routine there must be in 
the great majority of occupations — house- 
keeping, teaching, farming, in all mechanical, 
manual and clerical work. Still the out- 
look is not so bad. While routine must ac- 
company the machinery of daily civilized life, 
it need not be dull, unvaried routine. Each 
person must here be his own keeper — the 
keeper of his youth. 

When we cling to old ideas, old prejudices, 
old styles of dress, old business customs, old 
ways of doing things, little and big, in short, 
when we live in ruts, we transgress against 
the fundamental law of change; sooner or 
later, we must pay the penalty. Nature is an 
exact accountant; she never forgets nor for- 

[77] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

gives, but always balances the debits and 
credits on each man's account with inexorable 
justice. " Ignorance of the law excuseth no 
man," is a maxim of natural law as well as 
of criminal jurisprudence. 

Monotony wearies, depletes, enervates, be- 
numbs, ages. Solitary confinement leads to 
mental deterioration and physical deformity. 
It is among the severest punishments in penal 
institutions. More persons go insane, propor- 
tionately, following the dreary isolated task 
of sheep-tending than in any other occupation. 
Farmers' wives are second, statistically, on 
this dread list of unfortunates. The cause is 
easy to discover. Monotony, unvaried rou- 
tine, lack of new stimuli for the brain, lack of 
new, safeguarding physical actions ! 

We hear much about the terrible nervous 
strain of life in a great city — not without 
appalling evidence, too — and much about the 
wholesomeness of life in the country. But 
what of the ultimate human products of these 
two environments? Compare any average 
fifty farmers between the ages of forty-five 

[78] 



KEEP OUT OF RUTS 

and sixty years with any fifty business, pro- 
fessional or political men — who have not de- 
pleted their vitality by dissipation — of similar 
ages in a large city. The latter will be 
straighter of back, quicker and lighter of 
movement, physically more adaptable and 
resistant, and mentally more alert and vigor- 
ous. The majority of them will seem, nay, 
be, in reality, five to eight years younger than 
their brothers from the country. Nor does 
the manual labor done by farmers, and their 
early and long hours of work during the sum- 
mer, account for the difference in the condi- 
tions of the two sets of men. Physical labor 
is less taxing upon the vitality than intellectual 
labor, and, taking the whole year through, 
many business men in cities put in more hours 
of actual work than do farmers. Besides this, 
men living in the city often work hard until 
late hours seeking amusement, whereas men 
living in the country generally retire early. 
Clearly, the farmers are more favorably con- 
ditioned, hygienically, but the ultimate mental 
and physical states are usually against them. 

[79] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

The difference in the variety and the inten- 
sity of stimuli to the brain which the two 
environments afford is the chief factor that 
makes the difference in the two human 
products. 

To Wordsworth and Burns, country life 
ever afforded a fresh stimulus to the creative 
powers; but, to the average country person, 
the environmental stimuli are virtually the 
same from Christmas to Christmas. In the 
city one's attention is jogged and jostled at 
every turn. There is always u something 
doing," always something out of the ordinary 
transpiring which challenges the attention. 
Only a dull, insensate person can escape be- 
ing somewhat responsive to the intense and 
stimulating life around him. Unconsciously 
to himself, a man living in the city spreads 
out mentally in many directions. 

"Eyes, ears took in their dole, 
Brain treasured up the whole." 

But neither the city nor the country — in 
fact, nothing outside of one's self — is primarily 
[80] 



KEEP OUT OF RUTS 

responsible for any one's adjustment to life. 
" Life could never be thoroughly dull to a 
child of Rebecca's temperament," says Kate 
Douglas Wiggin, " her nature was full of 
adaptability, fluidity and receptivity." That's 
the anti-rut prescription! Adaptability — 
meeting new conditions graciously, not with 
the grim (and aging) virtue of martyrdom 
which endures what can't be cured; fluidity — 
easily changing the current of one's thought 
and emotion; receptivity — hospitably giving 
ready audience to new ideas, customs and 
creeds. 

People who are quite deficient in these im- 
pressionable qualities may be antagonized by 
the mere idea of seeking newness in daily 
experience. They only give willing audience 
to suggestions that run parallel with their con- 
firmed habits and prejudices. As a certain 
health officer, speaking of cremation, said, 
" Oh, it's sanitary, all right, but it does vio- 
lence to all my traditions and sentiments, and 
I'll not advocate it." Old traditional ideas, 
like old dresses, must be freshened up and 
[8 1] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

made over, else their possessors will find them- 
selves out of step with the times. 

Gail Hamilton says: " If there is one thing 
I cannot abide it is settling down into any- 
thing. Do you know the great trouble is 
that people ' marry and settle.' They would 
better be hanged. ' Settle ' is just another 
word for growing set and crusty and rou- 
tiney." 

To-day, only the bigot boasts of settled, 
unalterable convictions. Science has unsettled 
many of the accepted beliefs of half a century 
or less ago; it has revolutionized man's ideas 
of creation and many other events and things. 
Science itself is preserved from rutward ten- 
dencies by such investigators as Luther Bur- 
bank who produces a new species — a " scien- 
tific impossibility." 



[82] 



" New habits can be launched on 
condition of there being new stimuli 
and new excitements. Now life 
abounds in these, and sometimes they 
are such critical and revolutionary ex- 
periences that they change a man's 
whole scale of values and system of 
ideas. In such cases, the old order 
of his habits will be ruptured; and, if 
the new motives are lasting, new hab- 
its will be formed, and build up in him 
a new or regenerate nature." 

— William James. 

"It is only when there is no inter- 
est that the weary flesh takes the full- 
est and bitterest stamp of age. Of 
course, the moral is: Be interested and 
keep young." 

— Margaret D eland. 



VIII 

BODY AND BRAIN COMMERCE 

You would be " Seventy Years Young/' fel- 
low traveler? Good, but you plead guilty of 
now being forty years old? Well, while that 
is not so good, it does not necessarily doom 
you to continued and ever-increasing oldness; 
not, unless your own will dooms you. 

It is a primary tenet of psychological law 
that a man's conduct is the result of his domi- 
nant controlling thought. Biblical teaching 
is the same — " As a man thinketh in his heart, 
so is he." A person forty years old has by 
some mishap — illness, neglect, ignorance, self- 
indulgence, despondency or what not — lost 
the mental alertness and stamina and the 

[85] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

physical vitality and elasticity which are the 
essential elements of youth. Some parts of 
his body are contracted, or weakened, or semi- 
atrophied, and his brain does not grapple 
eagerly with new problems, as it is the nature 
of growing brains to do. He can achieve his 
youth's redemption by nothing less than a 
master motive that compels him persistently 
to pay heed, to arouse the faculties of atten- 
tion and interest and to express aliveness by 
voice, word and act. 

Reciprocity is the law of intercourse be- 
tween brain and body. By its activity each 
gives stimulus to the other, and receives, in 
turn, stimulus from the other's activity. 
There are distinct motor areas of the brain 
whose aliveness is primarily dependent upon 
the energetic activity of the muscles and bodily 
functions correlated to them. In those deaf 
from birth there is a certain brain area in 
which the cells never develop. On the other 
hand, never is an impression made upon the 
brain — either by the blood supply or through 
a sense avenue — that does not in some degree 
[86] 



BODY AND BRAIN COMMERCE 

affect the physical being. " What happens 
patently when an explosion or a flash of light- 
ning startles us, or when we are tickled, hap- 
pens latently with every sensation that we 
receive. * 

In order that this body and brain commerce 
may be of a vivid, youth-endowing character, 
man's continuous quest must be for new mer- 
chandise, i.e., new interests, sympathies, ex- 
periences and physical activities. The staple 
modes of thought, feeling, movement and ex- 
pression are not enough; as " Buster Brown " 
says: " What was good for us at one stage 
of the game won't do now. Superstitions and 
fool ideas have had to go when their useful- 
ness was gone." 

Dullness of life, as of trade, attends the 
man who deals only in old, much handled 
goods. The personal output of each succeed- 
ing year of life should rival in richness, in 
variety and beauty, that of the preceding. 
Each year, new lines of traffic should be 
opened up through the agency of new stimuli. 

* James's "Psychology." 

[87] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

This is not too high a price to pay for con- 
tinued vivid, organic life. To circumscribe 
one's self of to-day to one's self of yesterday 
is to face rearward. There is no dead calm 
in the sea of life where, self-satisfied, one can 
anchor, neither progressing nor retrograding. 
What we to-day possess of mental and physi- 
cal strength must be vitalized by to-day's 
activity, else there is loss. 

If we find that we are less capable of ad- 
justing ourselves to changing conditions than 
we once were, it is a sign that we are begin- 
ning to succumb to the " growing conserva- 
tism " of years. Only heroic treatment can 
save us. The pendulum of our activities must 
swing to the other extreme. We must become 
the veriest radicals in our efforts to uproot 
the established order of our daily customs. 
We must make ourselves frequently take the 
initiative in action, for, at any cost of effort, 
we must lift ourselves out of the groove of 
use and wont. In no way can one afford to 
abandon life, its interests, activities, demands 
and appeals. 

[88] 



BODY AND BRAIN COMMERCE 

Children are ever receiving new impressions 
from the world through their five senses and 
are ever responding to them. These new im- 
pressions and their motor reactions have a 
determining effect upon the quality of physical 
development. An idiot whose brain centers 
have not capacity to receive impressions may 
develop to the full stature of a man in physical 
bulk; the texture and quality of his muscles 
will, however, be as different from a man's 
that have been normally reacted upon as the 
texture and grain of a sappy, pithy hemlock 
are different from those of a resistant, sturdy 
oak. 

The reactionary effect on the body of differ- 
ent orders of mental impressions is by no 
means confined to the period previous to phys- 
ical maturity. Maturity is not synonymous 
with being stationary. Man is never a fixed, 
unalterable structure. His body is not exempt 
from the law of all living tissue; the law of 
continual change, transformation, reconstruc- 
tion. Who shall say that the quality of this 
perpetual transformation is not greatly modi- 

[8 9 ] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

fied by the quality and intensity of one's men- 
tal activity? Every thought and emotion, it 
must be remembered, has its motor reactions. 
If the thought be fresh, optimistic, dynamic, 
constructive, must not the making-over 
processes that are continually transpiring in 
the body be correspondingly beneficent? Cor- 
respondingly malevolent, aging, must be 
the physical effects of petty, fretful, pessi- 
mistic, aggressive and reiterative self-centered 
thoughts. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis says, 
" Nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts 
over which we brood." It is enough to keep 
one awake o' nights from sheer pity when 
one realizes how thoughts that are aging 
constitute the habitual daily regimen of so 
many people. 

But man's attitude toward himself is be- 
coming more hopeful. As never before he is 
to-day seeking to fulfill the old Delphic injun- 
tion, " Man, know thyself," and there is little 
doubt that he will improve upon acquaintance 
with himself. In the past man has not known 
the vital physiological effects of thought and 

[90] 



BODY AND BRAIN COMMERCE 

emotion, or the different effects upon the 
brain of stimuli, stale and fresh. Modern 
physiological psychology is furnishing this 
self-knowledge in popular form — comprehen- 
sible to laymen as well as to scientist. " We 
know now from the study of the brain that 
it keeps on growing in those particular cells 
in the third layer which are most closely 
concerned with mental life, until at least the 
age of sixty-three."* 

Dr. C. Hanford Henderson calls the long 
educational period subsequent to school and 
college life, " The Experimental Life." The 
term is significant. Whoever lives the " Ex- 
perimental Life" welcomes the new; he 
experiments with it, learns its lesson and 
absorbs whatever of good and growth it con- 
tains into the content of his own being. Such 
sympathetic response to each day's offering 
is one of the best protections against the nar- 
rowing, benumbing effects of habit. 

To take the vita 1 elements of life — friend- 



* Dr. G. Stanley Hall, Chautauqua Assembly Herald, August 
4th, 1905. 



r<?i] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

ship, love, religion, sacrifice, patriotism, hero- 
ism, work, art, beauty — as a matter of course, 
is deliberately to invite prosaic, common-place 
oldness. " To let go of our enthusiasm is to 
let go of our youth." 



&*! 



"To live well we need to form 
good habits, but it is even more nec- 
essary that these should be constantly 
controlled and frequently revised by 
conscious reason." 

— Edward Howard Griggs. 

" Life is a series of surprises. We 
do not guess to-day the mood, the 
pleasure, the power of to-morrow, 
when we are building up our being. 
People wish to be settled; only as far 
as they are unsettled is there any hope 
for them." — Emerson, 



IX 

THE HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL 

The man or woman, who daily lives up to the 
habit of the unhabitual, will never become 
dull, uninteresting, prejudiced — nor as old, 
in any sense, as otherwise might be. 

" There is an everlasting struggle in every 
mind between the tendency to keep un- 
changed, and the tendency to renovate, its 
ideas."* To wage warfare against this tend- 
ency to keep not only our ideas unchanged, 
but our physical actions, our associations, and 
all of our self-presentations unchanged, and 
to ally ourselves enthusiastically with the Op- 
'fcjames's " Psychology.' * 

[95] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

posite inherent tendency, is to take the safest 
road across the intervening years from Now 
to Then — to the kingdom of " Seventy Years 
Young." 

At his seventieth birthday banquet, Mark 
Twain explained how he had " beaten the doc- 
tor and the hangman for seventy years." He 
said: " Since forty I have been regular about 
going to bed and getting up — and that is one 
of the main things. I have made it a rule 
to go to bed when there was not anybody left 
to sit up with; and I have made it a rule to 
get up when I had to. That has resulted in 
an unswerving regularity of irregularity." 
" Unswerving regularity of irregularity " are 
only other words for the habit of the unhabit- 
ual. What a swing of the pendulum is Mr. 
Clemens's doctrine from that of Poor Rich- 
ard's Almanac! 

" Early to bed and early to rise, 
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." 

Farmers are " early to bed and early to rise " 
people, but they are not as a class wealthy, 

[96] 



HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL 

especially healthy — or long lived — nor are 
they noted for their exceptional wisdom. 
Such proverb platitudes, that sound well 
but do not prove up well, make for the 
habitual, for oldness. 

Many people become victims of the habit- 
ual through subservience to artificial, conven- 
tional codes. Their ideal is always to dress, 
act and speak in strict accordance with the 
" they say " proper standard. The living 
down to such an ideal — if ideal it may be 
called — results in the sacrifice of individuality, 
of simple sincerity of expression and of youth- 
ful spontaneity. 

Custom tyrannizes less over men of great 
natures than over men of average endow- 
ments. Perhaps that is one reason why they 
are great. Life with them is less a calculation 
of petty social and politic accounts than it is 
with others. They are more nobly spontane- 
ous and true. They are, and do not have to 
seem to be. 

How emancipated from the conventional, 
the habitual, was Macaulay. Notwithstand- 

[97] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

ing his father's austere discipline and melan- 
cholic gloom, and the weight of unusual 
responsibilities, in his home life he was like 
a gleeful child. Frolic and fun was the order 
of the hour when he came home. One writer 
says : " His visits shot the gloom through 
with sunshine, and when he went away, even 
the neighbor's children were in tears. His 
health and enthusiasm infected everybody he 
met." 

Conformity to convention means to be 
calm, to repress, to inhibit, to be formal in 
manner. It means to dissemble, to affect an 
indifference and immobility that is known as 
" the correct thing." In time, pretense be- 
comes habit. Then it is no longer pretense, 
it is the man. He is as old, as set, as unrespon- 
sive, in mind and body as he originally forced 
himself to seem to be. Thus do we blindly 
make the doom we dread — premature old 
age. 

"Sow a thought, reap an act; 
Sow an act, reap a habit ; 
Sow a habit, reap a destiny." 

[98] 



HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL 

Dreading decrepitude, infirmity, garrulity, se- 
nility, people hasten their unwelcome advent 
by this " thought-act-habit-destiny " process. 

In his " Psychology " Professor James 
says, in substance, that it is the old fogyism 
element that tends to keep ideas unchanged. 
This old fogyism tendency which according 
to his estimate begins to gain mastery over the 
majority of people by the time they are 
twenty-five years of age, resents the new — the 
new fact, the new idea, the new methods — 
" while genius in truth means little more than 
the faculty of perceiving in unhabitual ways." 

Unless we offer self-protective resistance 
to the neural tendencies of our beings, we 
shall become with the passing years tiresome 
repetitions of our former selves; each repe- 
tition being less vigorous, capable and attrac- 
tive than the previous one. Our bodies and 
our minds will become less buoyant and 
mobile, less capable of responding to new 
stimuli; we shall yield more and more to in- 
ertia. We shall become " set in our ways " — 
in a word, unquestionably old. Contrariwise, 

[99] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

if we continuously offer a counter-force to the 
inherent tendency that makes for automatism, 
we may keep our world and ourselves young. 
The habit of the unhabitual is not akin to 
fickleness, irrationality or irresponsibility. 
Unquestionably, in every well-balanced char- 
acter there must be what Edward Howard 
Griggs calls a " permanent center." No 
dependence can be placed on a person's atti- 
tude toward love, friendship, work, patriot- 
ism, religion, morality, truth or even toward 
his own life whose character is not based on 
such a center of stability. But tenacity of 
purpose, sincerity of motive and diligence are 
altogether consistent with marked variety in 
objective expression. As Dr. C. Hanford 
Henderson says: "The great people of the 
world have had this large versatility. You 
recall the tremendous sweep of Caesar's 
activities. You see Michaelangelo painting 
Madonnas and building bridges, frescoing 
ceilings and shaping David. You picture 
Leonardo leading all Florence spell-bound by 
the charm of his many-sided genius. In 
[ioo] 



HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL 

Goethe, you have the poet, philosopher, 
statesman, scientist, artist, man of letters. 
. . . In Franklin, you have a man distin- 
guished, if I have counted rightly, in at least 
eleven different directions."* 

The habit of the unhabitual means newness 
in our every day relations: First, new hab- 
its in our bodily actions; second, new 
habits in our relation to people; third, new 
habits in relation to our work and environ- 
ment; and fourth, new habits of thought and 
feeling. 

No general revolution in one's mode of 
living is necessary in order to form the habit 
of the unhabitual. One need not give up 
one's present occupation, or move into a new 
country, or part company with old friends. 
Albeit, radical changes in one's life sometimes 
work wonders. 

Some natures are like certain kinds of 
quartz. They are so tenacious of what they 
possess, so repellent to everything that is dif- 
ferent from themselves, and so reluctant to 

* Henderson's "Education and the Larger Life." 
[10!] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

change their form, that it takes a shock like 
a dynamite blast to force them out of the 
aging rut of the habitual. 

On the other hand, many persons are a-hun- 
ger for change in themselves. They are tired 
of their monotonous thoughts, feelings and 
self-expressions. They are tired of playing 
the same old role, in the same old way, on the 
same old stage. They long to have a different 
viewpoint, to do something out of the ordi- 
nary, to feel the stimulation of new associa- 
tions and environment. They are stirred by 
the " divine discontent " that points to higher 
realizations. Their tendency toward the un- 
habitual is so well established that they turn 
toward whatever is new in thought, discovery 
and opportunity as instinctively as the sun- 
flower turns toward the light. I recall an 
incident relating to a certain ninety-one-years- 
young great-grandmother who was of such 
nature. When bicycle riding was alarmingly 
new, one young woman who dared this " un- 
womanly " manner of locomotion called forth 
the hearty condemnation of an unfriendly 
[102] 



HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL 

cousin. This cousin " wondered what great- 
grandmother would say to such an unladylike 
spectacle ! " Being possessed with a trouble- 
some sense of duty, she reported the matter 
to their mutual great-grandmother. But the 
little German great-grandmother who still 
" helped " in her garden, did her own house- 
work, read the periodicals of the day, and 
thought nothing of walking two miles to 
town, instead of being shocked, said : "What's 
that you tell me? Gertrude rides a bicycle? 
Well, I'm glad she does. I've thought some 
of learning to ride one myself ! " Bless her ! 
In spite of four-score and ten odd years, she 
was young in inclination and in habit. 

The habit of the unhabitual is subject to 
the same process of establishment that all 
habits are. If to-day we do some unhabitual 
thing, perhaps at the cost of a positive wrench 
of effort, to-morrow another unhabitual act, 
mental or physical, can be executed with a 
little less volitional pulling of one's self to- 
gether for the onset, and so on with decreas- 
ing effort from day to day. 

[103] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

People who have passed the thirtieth year- 
stone have no occasion to agonize in spirit if 
they do not spontaneously respond to many 
of the appeals of life. Should the mind 
require spurring before it will pay heed, why, 
then, spur it. In very truth, the will must 
often spur us away from the ruts of indiffer- 
ence, indolence, pseudo-superiority, avarice 
and all narrowing trends. Tussles between 
our inclinations and our will indicate that we 
are still alive to our ethical responsibility in 
the fashioning of our lives. They are the 
" growing pains " of the spirit. 

Even in childhood this struggle must be 
fought over and over, else no self-control, and 
no power of adjustment to life's varying con- 
ditions and calls are developed. The signifi- 
cance of this inner struggle is practically the 
same whether the boy has to spur his mind 
toward his lessons away from the woods and 
fishing of his inclination, or the man has to 
spur his mind toward outdoor activities that 
make for youngness away from the easy-chair 
and the favorite book of his inclination. 
[104] 



HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL 

The psychological point on which emphasis 
is here laid is the necessity of daily stimulation 
of the will in some way or other — the more 
unhabitual the way, the better. " Nerve cells 
should be exercised to the point of reasonable 
fatigue, so as to be put in the proper condition 
for being made stronger by the nutriment 
which they will then be in condition to assimi- 
late. Memory is directly dependent upon 
nutrition."* So is the imagination, so is the 
will. 

To keep the imagination fresh and active 
is to be childlike in spirit; to keep the will 
alert, sturdy and reliable is to protect one's 
self from senility at the hundredth or the hun- 
dred and " anythingth " year. 

If the will fails us, we fail. Enthusiasm 
often enables one to make a startling half- 
back rush toward a desired goal, but it is 
only a resistant and persistent will that gives 
one the hardihood to gain ground and hold 
it against the opposing line of well-organized 
combatants; i.e., inherited tendencies and 

* Halleck's "Education of the Central Nervous System." 

[105] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

deeply ingrained habits that assert themselves 
with pernicious facility. 

" Always keep the stream of thought run- 
ning," says Matthew Arnold. Living accord- 
ing to the habit of the unhabitual allows this 
stream scant opportunity to become a placid 
pool or to stagnate. In the pathetic story, 
" Avis," Elizabeth Stuart Phelps suggests a 
way out of the eddying pools of thought. 
She says : " On Monday when the fire smokes, 
on Tuesday when the bills come in, on 
Wednesday when the children cry, it is not 
more smoke, more debt, more tears, we want; 
tell us, rather, how a statue grew, or how a 
poem sprang, or how a song was wrought, 
or how a prayer was conceived." Smoke, 
debts and tears are here the habitual. The 
soul cries for moments of release from such 
distressing details. It cries for inspiration 
from something unhabitual to the daily 
domestic struggle. 

To bring moments of art, poetry, song and 
spiritual aspiration into the content of daily 
life, would be to give unhabitual stimuli to 
[106] 



HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL 

thought and emotion in the lives of very many 
people. Daily life, uninspired by high ideals, 
tends to submerge people in the realm of the 
matter-of-fact, tends to make them selfishly 
appropriate the highest blessings of human 
association — love, one's children, one's wife 
or one's husband — and to treat them as if 
they were just a customary part of the equip- 
ment for the business of living. They are the 
young in spirit who are able to keep life above 
the plane of ordinariness. 

Some of the best protections against dull 
" low levels " of living are to cultivate varied 
and ever-varying interests; to make the area 
of contact with all phases of life as large as 
possible; to spread out in many directions 
mentally, sympathetically, motorly, and to 
penetrate deeply in some, or, at least, in one. 

A play-business is as necessary as a work- 
business. No man or woman who seeks self- 
realization can afford to be without one. An 
avocation is as profitable, ultimately, as a 
vocation. When any vocation whatsoever 
completely absorbs one, it is, in very truth, a 
[107] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

" getting that impoverisheth." Men thus 
exploit their own future. One man who had 
gambled with his life in such fashion, recently 
confessed his failure to a friend. He said : " I 
have made money. I am now one of the 
* multis,' but I am poor and sick in spirit — 
and I know it. Things, people, books, bore 
me ! Even my family — well, the whole truth 
is, / have lost the capacity for happiness. The 
only thing my brain responds to is some 
scheme for making more money! And my 
reason shows me the uselessness, the barren- 
ness of such effort." 

Darwin, late in life, deeply regretted that 
" his mind had become a machine for grind- 
ing out general laws," and realized that if 
his devotion to his research work had not 
excluded other lines of interest, " parts of his 
brain now atrophied would doubtless have 
been kept alive." 

That college professor proved himself a 

practical psychologist who, while delivering 

a course of lectures on psychology at one of 

the Chautauqua summer schools, incidentally 

[108] 



HABIT OF THE UNHABITUAL 

attended the School of Domestic Science, and 
learned how to make bread " just to surprise 
his wife." 

That which is a vocation to one may be 
an avocation to another. At the time when 
Dr. Alice Freeman Palmer was president of 
Wellesley College, she made some of the joys 
of housekeeping her avocation. Once, being 
asked what was the happiest moment of her 
life, Mrs. Palmer thought for a moment, 
then laughingly replied, " When the jelly 
jellied." 

Whether it be making bread or jelly, read- 
ing or making books, running or inventing 
a machine, playing the violin or playing 
farmer, cultivating roses or teaching settle- 
ment children, the spirit of youth requires that 
we should have lines of interest other than 
those that are habitual, or coincident with 
our daily vocation. Hobbies, fads, " isms," 
are good mental tonics. They give restful 
variety to the worker from his work and save 
many of the idle rich from the fatal occupa- 
tion of " killing time " — killing time, which 
[109] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

means killing one's interest, enthusiasm, 
youngness. 

The habit of the unhabitual can be fostered 
in a hundred little ways. It is fostered when- 
ever we catch ourselves up and refrain from 
telling some old story or stale joke, when- 
ever we willfully direct our line of thought 
or reading into a new channel, whenever we 
express an old idea in an original dress, when- 
ever we sympathetically relate ourselves to 
people who are not of our set or clique, or to 
those whose experience has been radically 
different from our own. It is fostered every 
time we decline to take ourselves and our 
experiences too seriously, every time that we 
look an unkind Fate in the face and smile, 
every time that we can see the funny side of 
a perplexing situation. In short, it is fostered 
every time that we think, feel, say or do any- 
thing that makes the " stream of thought " 
somewhat change its ordinary course. 



[no] 



"A little girl's bad brother set a 
trap to catch birds. She knew it was 
wrong, cruel, against the laws of kind- 
ness, altogether inexcusable from her 
point of view. 

"She wept at first, then her mother 
— two hours later — noticed that she 
had become cheerful once more. 

* * « What did you do? ' asked the 
mother. 

"'I prayed for my brother to be 
made a better boy.' 

"'What else?' 

"'I prayed that the trap would 
not catch any little birds.' 

"'What else?' 

" 'Then I went out and kicked the 
old trap all to pieces." ' — Anonymous. 



X 



" IF TO DO WERE AS EASY — " 



" If to do were as easy as to know what were 
good to do," not only " chapels had been 
churches, and poor men's cottages princes' 
palaces," but straightway there had been as 
marked revolutions in man's personal estate 
— his thoughts, passions, character and body. 
But " easy " or not, to do is the only way to 
keep young in mind and body. " It is the 
motor act that gives the set to character."* 
And it is the motor acts that in the last analy- 
sis chiefly determine man's physical condition. 
Failure to do what it " were good to do " 
and what one has the capacity for doing con- 
stitutes the death-warrant of many a person's 

* James's "Psychology." 

[113] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

youngness. The would-be author who sat 
down before a " potential bottle of ink, and 
thought of the thoughts he ought to think," 
but did not think them, was his own exe- 
cutioner. 

Due and right guidance of the motor ac- 
tivities makes for the retention of youngness 
in three specific ways: (i) One is thus en- 
abled to modify if not to oust thoughts and 
feelings that are " likely to be disadvanta- 
geous"; (2) The motor areas of the brain 
are stimulated; (3) The body is kept vigor- 
ous, flexible — young. 

Psychology speaks authoritatively regard- 
ing the inevitable reactionary effect of the 
body's activities on the brain. " Whenever 
the fingers are flexed, the arm extended, the 
muscles of a leg moved, the body bent, the 
expression of the face changed or a word 
spoken, there is a corresponding motor modi- 
fication of the brain."* " It is easy to demon- 
strate that such bodily exercise as gymnastics, 
fencing, swimming, riding, dancing and skat- 

* Halleck's ''Education of the Central Nervous System." 

[114] 



"IF TO DO WERE AS EASY—" 

ing are much more exercises of the central 
nervous system, of the brain and spinal mar- 
row than of the muscles."* 

The mutual reactionary effect of inner psy- 
chic states and outer physical ones is much 
as Lawrence Sterne puts it: "A man's body 
and his mind (with the utmost reverence to 
both I speak it) are exactly like a jerkin and 
a jerkin's lining — rumple the one, you rum- 
ple the other." A dejected physical attitude 
induces a dejected mental state. A brave out- 
ward expression stimulates the nerve-gang- 
lion that begets courage. The half-frightened 
boy who whistles his loudest when passing a 
" spooky " place in the dark is developing 
courage according to psychologic law, even 
though he never heard the word psychology. 

It is a mooted question among students of 
the mind and body whether a man is old 
because he stoops, or stoops because he is old; 
whether he is glad because he laughs, or 
laughs because he is glad. Whichever may 
be the cause and which the effect, certain it 

* Du Bois Reymond, Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XXI. 

[us] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

is that indirect control of the thoughts and 
emotions, through the activities and expres- 
sions of the physical self, is easier than is con- 
trol by direct assault. 

It is little short of impertinence to admon- 
ish a friend " not to give way " to grief, 
worry, despondency, passion or nervousness, 
or not to fear disease, old age or other per- 
sonal disaster. Everybody of ordinary intelli- 
gence knows that such mental states are 
injurious; but knowing does not enable one 
to cease so feeling and thinking. It is not 
" as easy to do as to know what were good 
to do." 

A friend is a genuine benefactor who 
helps another out of a mental or emotional 
slough by persuading him to some physical 
activity that shall vigoruosly tense his mus- 
cles, increase his breathing, and speed the 
blood through his arteries at a quickened rate. 
These physiological changes must inevitably 
react wholesomely on the inner psychological 
state. 

A nervous state can often be vanquished by 
[116] 



"IF TO DO WERE AS EASY—" 

a tramp through the woods, an exhilarating 
mountain climb, a brisk game of tennis or 
golf, a gallop on a spirited horse, a swim, a 
good pull at the oars, even a plunge into a 
bath, followed by fresh clothes, five minutes of 
stimulating physical exercises, or the dramatic 
oral reading of some stirring bit of literature 
where one thinks and feels intensely with the 
author: anything serves that furnishes new 
stimulus to the imagination and demands posi- 
tive physical expression. 

It is good to be thoroughly aroused; good 
to lose all conventional and habitual restraint 
— as at a 'varsity boat race or a baseball or 
football game ; good to clap the hands, stamp 
the feet, stand on benches, jump up and 
down, throw the hat in the air and cheer to 
the limit of the lungs — good for the thoughts, 
the emotions and the body. 

If one is heavy of heart or down on his 
luck or melancholic, he should compel himself 
to show forth cheerfulness in his objective 
expression — not necessarily by words, but 
most necessarily by actions. He should stand 

[117] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

erect and show a brave front to the world, lift 
the drooping eyelids, walk with light, buoy- 
ant step, romp with children, take a brisk 
run in the fresh air or dance a few turns 
around the room. Dr. G. Stanley Hall, 
speaking of the influence of rhythmical bodily 
movements, says: "It is probable that man 
gets nearer his lost paradise when he is danc- 
ing than at any other time. If a person is 
nervously tired he should dance the minuet; 
if he is apathetic, something faster. Dancing 
has great curative powers. Men at fifty or 
eighty years of age ought to dance." 

Of course, one does not feel inclined to 
vigorous or animated objective activity when 
one is subjectively inert, apathetic, or de- 
pressed. It is a question of inclination, self- 
indulgence and oldness on the one side, and 
of keeping alive while we live on the other. 
Which will you choose? 

Nothing is more conclusively proven by 

physiological psychology in its study of the 

baby, child, youth, young man, adult, and aged 

person, than the fact that human life is meant, 

[" 8] 



" IF TO DO WERE AS EASY—" 

first of all, for activity, not for idleness ; that 
it is only through positive expression — not 
mere passive existence — that a human being 
can approximate his possible self-realization. 
It is a primary tenet of psychology that high 
thinking counts for little, and strong emotion 
for less than nothing (because it weakens the 
character) , unless they are carried over into 
some concrete activity. We grow mentally 
and physically by activity; we are educated by 
activity; our influence is largely dependent 
upon it, and only by it can we hope long to 
retain our youngness. 

Our vigilance must never languish or lapse, 
if we would not be lured by inclination and 
inertia into degenerating inactivity. It is so 
easy not to do, so easy to accept petty personal 
comforts at the sacrifice of mental stamina 
and physical hardihood. We baby ourselves 
in innumerable ways, especially when there is 
no financial necessity to urge us to exertion. 
Often, we are self-hypnotized by our clever 
excuses for inactivity — the storm, the heat or 
cold, a headache, a feeling of lassitude, an 

[119] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

expected caller, a little sewing, letter-writing 
or the latest magazine, becomes to us a reason 
instead of a subterfuge for our being guilty 
of what David Starr Jordan calls " the sin 
of undervitalization." 



[120] 



"We forget that every good that 
is worth possessing must be paid for 
in strokes of daily effort. We post- 
pone and postpone until these smiling 
possibilities are dead. By neglecting 
the necessary concrete labor, by spar- 
ing ourselves the little daily tax, we 
are positively digging the graves of our 
higher possibilities." 

— William James. 

"The care of the body and the 
care of the soul are not two duties, 
but two parts of one duty." 

—Phillips Brooks. 



XI 

KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

Youngness of body is menaced continually 
by foes from without and within. The very 
earth seems against us ! Gravity is in league 
with the old-age demon. It is ever trying to 
get the better of us, to make us yield the 
erectness of youth and become bent, stoop- 
shouldered' — old, physically. We must in 
very truth " brace up," muscularly and men- 
tally, if we would not be worsted by it. 

Some of the foes from within that work 
for our physical downfall are fatigue, exhaus- 
tion, apathy, ennui, and all introspective 
trends of thought, be they sad or otherwise. 
Whenever the nervous force or physical vital- 
ity is subnormal — from any cause whatsoever 
[123] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

— or when one is " buried in thought," the 
muscular tendency is toward a relaxed, semi- 
unalive condition ; the chest tends to sink, the 
torso to sag, the shoulders to droop, and the 
head to incline forward. It matters not 
whether the person be a lad of fifteen or a 
woman of seventy; the order of bodily expres- 
sion is the same in either case. The degree 
of relaxation, of course, depends upon the 
intensity of the inciting cause. 

Gravity, physical and mental subnormal 
states and all introspective trends of thought ! 
Formidable and unavoidable foes, you say? 
True enough, and we can insure the mainte- 
nance of our youngness against their lifelong 
assaults only by habitually living above the 
line of least resistance. This means that we 
cannot self-indulgently " float with the cur- 
rent," or " let things slide," or " laugh and 
grow fat," or " trust to luck." If we would 
live above this line of physical and mental 
decadence, we must row against tide and 
weather, must shape things and events that 
relate to our welfare, must resist the fat 

[124] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

disease, and we must know that the only luck 
on which we can safely depend is the luck that 
persistent self-effort brings. 

Lest the idea of ceaseless effort be dis- 
couraging to some, let it be stated at once 
that the most effectual means for the retention 
of our bodies' youngness is to cultivate two 
simple habits — habits eminently ethical and 
altogether personally attractive — namely, the 
habit of health and the habit of cheer and 
courage. 

In a certain sense, these are paradoxical 
habits. They do not thrive by repetition, nor 
is their nature toward crystallization; instead, 
they are often solely dependent upon new 
thoughts, new activities and new responses 
to life. 

The mental vigor and stimulation implied 
by the habits of cheer and courage are, in 
truth, the major part of the subjective side 
of the habit of health. And a most important 
side it is! The effect of mind-states upon the 
body's chemistry is, in its marvelous results, 
akin to the claims made by the alchemists of 

[125] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

old. The extreme effects of the mind's action 
are universally recognized. This is evidenced 
by such current expressions as " trembling 
with fear," " frozen with horror," " purple 
with rage," and " bowed with grief." Many 
physicians to-day, in their diagnoses, are as 
searching in their scrutiny of mental states as 
of physical ones; and every one readily rec- 
ognizes certain conspicuous functional effects 
of mental states on bodily states, such as 
arrested digestion from grief, sudden diar- 
rhoea and swooning from fear, and the thump- 
ing of the heart under excitement, or its 
losing a beat under suspense or fright. We 
do not, however, practically realize that every 
mental state — because of the mechanical in- 
terrelation of the brain and the organs of 
circulation, respiration and digestion — must 
affect, for better or for worse, the vital proc- 
esses. " All mental states are followed by 
bodily activity of some sort. They lead to 
inconspicuous changes in breathing, circula- 
tion, general muscular tension, and glandular 
or other visceral activity, even if they do not 

[126] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

lead to conspicuous movements of the muscles 
of voluntary life."* 

The vaso-motor nerves — an elaborate sys- 
tem of minute nerves that penetrate the mus- 
cular coats of all the blood vessels — are the 
immediate connection between a depressed 
mental state and lowered physical tone, as 
poor circulation. These nerves make it im- 
possible for any mental state not to affect the 
physical stamina. Not only are the circulation 
and respiration directly affected by our 
thoughts and emotions, but all of the glands 
of the system are affected; the digestive fluids 
may be dangerously polluted or arrested by 
anger. Such ethical mental states as cheer 
and courage are pre-eminently wholesome and 
dynamic, physically. Romanes says: "A 
prolonged flow of happy feeling does more 
to brace up the system for work than any 
other influence operating for a similar length 
of time."t 



* James's "Psychology." 

f " Science and Philosophy of Recreation," Popular Science Monthly , 
Vol. XV. 



[127] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

Just how the habits of cheer and courage 
are to be maintained in the face of the seem- 
ingly untoward and depressing conditions that 
sometimes confront nearly every one, is a 
problem with as many different right answers 
as there are people to solve it. Moreover, 
each person must ever and again re-solve it 
because new, unknown factors may daily enter 
into any personal equation. A few general 
suggestions are given in the following chap- 
ters that may prove helpful toward the mas- 
tery of mental states. But each individual 
must find his or her own way to the spiritual 
heights where cheer and courage prevail 
despite near-by clouds. 

The habit of health is only another name 
for the normal physical state. All deviations 
from it are abnormal conditions — the results 
of the violation of some law of right living. 
They bear witness to man's folly or ignorance, 
direct or inherited. The constant renewal of 
the cells which nature untiringly carries on in 
man's physiological laboratory is the funda- 
mental basis of the habit of health. Formerly, 

[128] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

it was held that all the cells of the body were 
replaced by new ones once in seven years. 
But modern physiology holds that this replace- 
ment of cells occurs practically every few 
weeks. It is, therefore, evident that this 
renewal of cells affords man an opportunity, 
in a large degree, to mold his own future. 
" The constant change of the tissues due to 
the nutritive process of waste and repair in the 
body makes new habits possible to the latest 
day of life, because the new tissue ' sets ' itself 
naturally to the latest ' pathway ' and * tends 
to corroborate and fix the impressed struc- 
tural modification.' "* 

The harmonious conduct of " the nutritive 
process of waste and repair," i.e., digestion, 
and its sister processes, circulation and respira- 
tion, constitute health. But in the cultivation 
of the habit of health, we must seek indirectly, 
rather than directly, to regulate these vital 
processes, for they are primarily automatic. 
Our immediate business is rightly to order 
certain voluntary activities which, in turn, 

* James's "Psychology," 
[129] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

have a tremendous influence on the so-called 
involuntary processes. 

Chief among these acts are: (i) Mental 
and emotional states; (2) Right use of the 
body in all necessary daily acts, and (3) 
Physical exercise. 

( 1 ) Mental and Emotional States. 

The best mental tonic for the vital processes 
are the habits of cheer and courage. Not 
" spells " of happy confidence which are more 
than offset by " spells " of doubt, of timidity 
and of poisonous fear, but an habitually posi- 
tive cheer-courage outlook. Of course, think- 
ing and feeling are not strictly voluntary 
acts, but it lies within the domain of one's 
volitional power to select the kind of thoughts 
and feelings which shall receive hospitable 
encouragement. 

(2) Right Use of the Body. 

To neglect, over-tax or in any way to " put 
upon " the body is an injustice that never 
fails to beget its legitimate penalty, however 
[130] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

long delayed it may be. When the body is 
treated with due consideration, it is a willing 
hand-maiden of the spirit; but when it is sub- 
jected to indignities and misuse, the whiplash 
of the will or some stimulant is necessary to 
urge it to response and work. Moreover, 
misuse often transforms it into a complaining, 
harassing tyrant that prohibits free play of 
the higher faculties. 

It is a tragedy, silent and terrible, to be 
young in spirit and old in body; to have 
the desire and ambition to do as the mature- 
young do, the desire to be an active factor in 
the world's arena of accomplishment, but to 
be prohibited by an infirm, worn or painfully 
rebellious body. It is, in very truth, " a 
house divided against itself." Bitter, indeed, 
are the tears of spirit when a person is forced 
to confess that he or she is responsible for the 
body's early desertion from the fine battle of 
life. The way the body is used in the habitual 
daily acts of life has much to do with its last- 
ing qualities. This flesh machine is not only 
generally racked but parts of it are weakened, 

[131] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

injured and displaced by rough and unseemly 
usage; much as similar usage damages an 
inorganic machine — a watch or an engine. 

Everybody knows that muscles grow by use, 
that prolonged disuse causes them to become 
weakened and finally atrophied. Everybody 
must acknowledge, also — when he stops to 
think about it — that bodily agility, flexibility, 
dexterity, suppleness, are maintained through 
exercising the body in unhabitual ways, or, 
more definitely, in ways different from the 
routine ways that the ordinary daily acts of 
man's life necessitate. 

The lightness and grace of a dancing mas- 
ter do not betoken that he possesses abilities 
inherently different from those possessed by 
a clumsy, slouchy day-laborer. The two men 
were each endowed with similar possibilities 
of movement and expression; but for years 
they have used their bodies in radically dif- 
ferent ways, and this difference in use has pro- 
duced the different results in the bodily ex- 
pression of the two men. 

The bodies of an overwhelming majority 

[i3 2 ] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

of society women, home-makers, school teach- 
ers, sewing girls and domestics are, by the age 
of thirty-five or forty, awkwardly stiff and 
set. Their attitudes are uninterestingly ugly, 
because lacking in ease, freedom and grace. 
Even their movements are characterized by a 
woodeny unyieldingness. But there is no 
constitutional physiological difference between 
the mass of such women and such a type as 
Madame Bernhardt. This actress, of up- 
wards of sixty years, is as lithe, supple and as 
muscularly versatile and responsive as might 
have been the real, impetuous, poetical boy 
of sixteen whom she represents in " L'Aig- 
lon." Again, it is difference in the daily use 
of the body and mind that accounts for the 
difference in effects. The only sufficient use is 
variety of use — invigorating variety. 

Madame Bernhardt never allows a day to 
pass, no matter how taxing the work of study, 
travel, receiving, rehearsing and acting, that 
she does not devote at least thirty minutes to 
physical exercise which embodies movements 
other than those naturally required in ordi- 
[i33] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

nary daily life. Thousands of women, those, 
too, who consider themselves cultured, do not 
devote thirty minutes a month or a year to 
the training of their bodies for freedom of 
expression. And their tense or awkward or 
weak or nervous or corpulent old bodies bear 
witness to this neglect. It is a case of " As 
ye sow." 

A man is as old as his back is. 

One can put on or take off twenty years 
in appearance by the way one stands. A 
standing or sitting position where the back is 
hooped outward, the chest contracted and 
sunken, and where the trunk sags forward so 
that its weight presses heavily upon the deli- 
cate unprotected visceral organs, is most in- 
jurious and aging. Such position interferes 
with the functioning of the vital organs and 
leads to poor circulation, distressed digestion 
and insufficient breathing. 

To prevent Old-Age Habits in the Daily 
Use of the Body : — 

Stand easily erect without apology or self- 

[134] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

assertion, simply strong, free and self- 
respectful. 

Stand with the weight of the body on the 
balls of the feet, instead of settling back on 
the heels. 

Keep Nature's double-curve of beauty in 
the back, instead of a stiff, straight line or a 
single disfiguring outward curve. 

Stand with the chest in front of the abdo- 
men instead of allowing the abdomen to make 
one look old and heavy by its unseemly for- 
wardness. 

Remember that the head is the topmost, 
not the foremost, part of the body. 

Keep the shoulders free from all awkward 
restraint. 

Bend from the hip joints — not from the 
waist line — when leaning over a desk, table or 
stove. 

Walk with a light, free step and with econ- 
omy of nervous energy. 

Cultivate, in every possible way, lightness 
and ease in the movements of the body or any 
part of it. Move the head, hand, arm, trunk, 

[135] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

and the feet, not as if they were leaden 
weights, but as if they were the willing agents 
of a happy, young spirit — one that found 
pleasure in exertion. 

Above all, it is essential to learn how to 
refrain from senseless, destructive muscular 
tension. Learn how to relax, to let go physi- 
cally, how to untie the fuss and worry knots. 
This means the ability to rest, the ability to 
put ourselves, at will, in a condition to gain 
vital reinforcement than which nothing is 
more protective of our youngness. The will 
should act as a governor-valve for shutting 
off as well as turning on steam in our human 
machine. It is not the work we do, but the 
way we work and the energy we waste when 
we are not working, that exhausts and ages us. 
The ability to concentrate on one thing to the 
exclusion of everything else — save as remote 
" fringe consciousness " — and then com- 
pletely to drop that before turning the atten- 
tion to some other activity, is one of the 
secrets of conserving nervous energy. 

Perhaps in this day and generation, one 

[136] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

needs must " step lively " or be distanced in 
the race. But it is possible to step lively 
without stress and strain; possible to move 
quickly without hurry; possible to think ef- 
fectively without worry. If it should require 
much time and patience to cultivate the grace 
which enables one to be "a holy vegetable," 
now and again, it will be time well invested, 
for, verily, 'tis a youth-saving grace. As 
James Whitcomb Riley says : 

"Let us pause and catch our breath, 
On the hither side of death." 

(3) Physical Exercise. 

In order that the habit of health may per- 
sist decade after decade, it must be daily 
fortified by upbuilding exercise. In some way 
— the more unique and changeful and playful 
the way, the better for the body's prosperity — 
every muscle and vital function should be 
stimulated at least once every day of one's life. 

This order of organic stimulation — which 
is widely different in effect from the inorganic 
stimulation of drugs and liquors — keeps the 
[i37] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

vital organs in tone and makes their chemical 
processes more perfect; it causes more thor- 
ough and speedy elimination of poisonous 
waste substances; it sends a richer supply of 
blood and nerve energy to all parts of the 
organism; it makes the body and brain more 
resistant to the disease microbes that are ever 
alert to attack a weak place in our physical 
defense. By means of it the food nourishes, 
rebuilds and re-creates the body better than 
Nature could accomplish these results without 
such co-operation on our part. 

The question now is, what kind of exercise 
will produce such beneficial results? Many 
an off-hand answer would be: "Why, farm- 
work, housework, taking care of the furnace 
and shoveling off the walks, any kind of good, 
honest manual labor. Exercise that amounts 
to something! No fancy folderols are nec- 
essary! " 

Gladstone found chopping down trees first- 
rate physical exercise. Tree-chopping is man- 
ual labor that brings all the muscles of the 
body into vigorous play, that creates the im- 

[138] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

perative demand for increased respiration 
and quickened circulation. As a cure for dys- 
pepsia such exercise is unexcelled, for it espe- 
cially strengthens and stimulates the trunk of 
the body and the trunk's vital contents. But 
much manual labor is of a directly opposite 
nature. It is restrictive, using only a few sets 
of muscles. These are often used to the point 
of exhaustion while other muscular areas are 
practically unexercised. Again, the position 
necessitated by many kinds of manual labor, 
instead of strengthening the trunk as does 
tree-chopping, is such that the muscles of the 
trunk are weakened, the vital organs cramped 
and even crowded out of their rightful places. 
Consider such manual workers as farmers, 
farmers' wives, washer-women, charwomen, 
navies, miners and factory employees. These 
are far from ideal types, physically. As a 
class, they are heavy and clumsy of movement ; 
their bodies early become stiffened, stooped 
and shrunken; they age early; they wear out 
early. Verily, " All work and no toy, makes 
Jack a dull boy " — mentally and physically. 

[ J 39] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

It is the vivifying element of newness 
in exercise, or the out-of-the-ordinary direc- 
tion of the nervous energy, that best mo- 
bilizes the muscles and quickens the mind 
and body. 

Of course all exercise is, in some degree, 
stimulative ; but any exercise becomes less and 
less so as it becomes more and more automatic. 
That is why the exercise of the brain and 
body attendant upon any routine occupation, 
from that of the ditch-digger to that of the 
United States Supreme Court Judge, is inad- 
equate to keep all parts of the organism 
constructively active and young. To illus- 
trate : Physiologically considered, a movement 
of the body or of any part of it is worth much 
or little in proportion to the amount of blood 
sent to the parts used — these parts being the 
afferent and efferent nerves, the ganglionic 
center, whether spinal or cerebral or sympa- 
thetic, and the muscle or muscles. Tests of 
measurement made by the plethysmograph 
show that the supply of blood sent to the 
entire circuit by physical movements varies 
[140] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

in a decreasing ratio to the degree of the auto- 
matism of the movements. 

The activities, mental and physical, attend- 
ant upon daily civilized existence, and those 
attendant upon any line of routine work, be- 
come more and more automatic by years of 
repetition; hence, the blood supply that such 
activities induce is meager and not sufficient 
to sustain youthful vitality. On the other 
hand, unhabitual movements that require the 
co-operation of the attention and the dy- 
namic will in their execution necessarily in- 
volve the sending of a richer blood supply to 
the parts used. If this supply be generous 
enough to replace in full measure the inevita- 
ble daily wear and tear of living, it is plain to 
be seen that the depletion of forces concom- 
itant of oldness may long be delayed. 

Exercise that makes for the habit of health 
must be vivifying, not exhaustive; it must be 
freeing and harmonizing, not restrictive. 
There must be dynamic will-action behind it. 
The psychic state of youngness is zest; that of 
oldness, dull indifference. 

[hi] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

All exercise, whether it be games, athletic 
sports, walking, running, gardening, pitching 
hay or cleaning house, which is characterized 
by the play-spirit, is rejuvenating. As chil- 
dren, we unconsciously expressed our vitality 
and vigorous spirits through spontaneous 
physical exercise. We ran, jumped, rolled, 
kicked, tumbled, bent, twisted, wrestled, 
skipped, stood on tiptoes, on one foot, turned 
somersaults, frolicked generally. If we 
grown-ups for even one generation should 
keep up the frolicsome games and habits of 
early childhood, innumerable old-age condi- 
tions, as well as " the cares that infest the 
day," would " silently steal away," or, better 
still, would never put in an appearance. 

Outdoor sports and games have lifted years 
from many a pair of shoulders. It is much to 
be regretted that only a comparatively few 
men and women do, or probably ever will, 
take an active part in them. 

If, then, manual labor is inadequate to pro- 
duce the desired results and outdoor sports 
are not accessible or acceptable to the large 

[142] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

majority of adult people, some other kind of 
exercise must be found to rescue the body's 
youngness. Certain Health Exercises — that 
can be taken at any time and in any rational 
costume — seem best to meet this need. Such 
as simple exercises for general invigoration, 
relaxation, flexibility and mobility, strength, 
endurance, symmetry, for developing quick 
and ready co-ordination, for quieting the 
nerves and for preventing and overcoming 
corpulency. These exercises to produce the 
desired results must not be mechanical and 
stereotyped — mere dead motions ; they should 
be characterized by spontaneity, individuality 
and the joy of physical exertion. 

It is not the purpose of this book to de- 
scribe specific physical exercises; but two or- 
ders of gymnastics must be mentioned because 
they are such potent agencies in the retention 
of health and youngness of the body, and 
because just to mention them induces some 
degree of almost involuntary response, so 
natural are they. These exercises are stretch- 
ing and breathing. 

[143] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

Stretch when you are tired, stretch when 
you are sleepy, stretch yourself awake, stretch 
when your body has been in a fixed position 
for some time, stretch corpulency and settled 
maturity out of the body, and stretch mobility, 
grace and beauty of figure into existence. 
Stretch the arms, stretch the hands, stretch 
the legs, stretch the back, stretch the sides, 
stretch the chest, stretch the throat and stretch 
the diaphragm. Stretch standing, stretch sit- 
ting and stretch lying. Work and stretch, 
laze and stretch. Stretch and yawn, stretch 
and relax. Stretch ! Stretch ! Stretch ! 

As for breathing, suffice it to say that gen- 
erous breathing is the most urgent require- 
ment for full, abundant life. Meager, upper- 
chest breathing is a menace to our health and 
youngness. It is doubtful if there be people 
who are actually " too lazy to breathe," but 
there certainly are many persons, even of the 
bustling, hustling sort, who are too careless, 
or indifferent, or ignorant to breathe suffi- 
ciently to fortify themselves against old-age 
atrophies. 

[144] 



KEEPING THE BODY YOUNG 

To counter-check the influence of gravity 
and of introspective trends of thoughts, not 
only should Health Exercises be faithfully 
practiced for a few minutes every day, but the 
principles of action and control on which they 
are based should be applied to the use of the 
body in every-day acts, every day. 

Obviously, the earlier in life that one be- 
gins to practice the means that make for 
health and youngness, the better, but it is a 
mistaken idea to think that one " is too old 
to learn gymnastics " (Health Exercises, not 
athletic feats). The writer has personally 
known hundreds of persons over forty years 
of age — some even over eighty — who, by the 
practice of Health Exercises and right use of 
the body in daily acts, have produced trans- 
formations youthward hardly credible to any 
save eye-witnesses. She has seen stooped and 
shoulder-burdened women and men gradually 
emerge from the weight of years and stand 
erect, buoyant, young; has seen old, rounded 
backs inflexibly set, yield — albeit reluctantly 
— and regain flexible mobility; cramped, nar- 

[145] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

row chests of adult people fill out and broaden 
from one to four inches; short waists of 
grandmotherdom lengthen to ideal propor- 
tions; disfiguring corpulency disappear; inert, 
listless invalidism supplanted by spontaneous, 
youthful vigor; the heavy, dragging steps of 
age " shuffled off," and the elastic, buoyant 
gait of youth become the established order of 
movement. These are a few of the many 
outward telltale signs of what may be accom- 
plished by " taking one's self in hand " with a 
will. Equally noticeable are the mental 
changes wrought in many persons who have 
been " transformed by the renewing of their 
minds " plus a physical backing of unhabitual, 
invigorating exercises. 



[i 4 6] 



" Beware of the commonplace, 
that mood where you yawn and stretch 
and hunt out your aches and pains as 
old people do who gloat over disease 
and decay." — "Some Philosophy of 
the Hermetks." 

"We grizzle every day. I see no 
need of it . . . infancy, youth, re- 
ceptive, aspiring, abandons itself to the 
instruction flowing from all sides. But 
the man and woman of seventy assume 
to know it all, they have outlived their 
hope, they renounce aspirations, accept 
the actual for the necessary, and talk 
down to the young." — Emerson, 



XII 

SOCIAL RUTS 

One of the social ruts into which years betray 
the unwary is the looking-backward rut. 
Those who belong to a generation that has 
arrived must be on guard lest this mental habit 
of " tedious old fools " gets them in its 
clutches. Those who belong to the coming 
generation are self-protected. 'Tis the na- 
ture of youth to be anticipatory, as 'tis the 
tendency of years to be retrospective. 

Tendencies, however, are not established 
conditions; they are driftings, inclinations 
that are subject to government by the will. 
It is for each individual to say whether a 

[i49] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

given tendency shall be cultivated into an 
habitual state, or held in leash, or annihilated 
by counter-check acts. 

There is imperative need for all who would 
retain their youth to keep the present moment 
alive — intensely so. They must stoutly com- 
bat the retrospective tendency from its first 
symptoms. When a man or woman overhears 
himself or herself saying, " Why, that was a 
long time ago when I was only so old," or, 
"Let me see! That must have been more 
than umpty-umpty years ago," it is time to 
make a quick turn. " When a man begins to 
reminis, he is getting old." 

We should look forward to life — to the 
life of to-day and to-morrow — not backward 
at life. Past days, events, things and associa- 
tions have had their innings. The present 
day issues claim the diamond now. 

Socially, one of the best ways of keeping 
in touch with this-world, present-day issues is 
to have active sympathy with the coming gen- 
eration; sympathy that makes their interests, 
ambitions, aspirations, accomplishments and 

[150] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

joys our own. Then may we, too, keep 
" coming." New stimulus always brings new 
reactions and growth. Parents desirous of 
giving their children everything for their best 
growth can do nothing wiser than to grow 
and develop with them. 

In " The Luxury of Children," E. S. Mar- 
tin happily says: "The boy coming home 
from school for Christmas holidays adds 
new turns to the language of the family 
vocabulary, acting in various ways like a 
fresh lump of yeast in the family dough." 
Lives unleavened by any new fermenting 
stimulus from one year to the next cannot 
escape becoming stale, old. 

An effectual way of putting one's self out- 
side the pale of young people's companionship 
is to harp on the themes " When I was 
young," and " In my day." Are not these 
" your days," and mine, whatever our ages 
happen to be? They are, unless we fail 
to relate ourselves to them because our only 
vista on life is from the looking-backward 
rut. 

[i5i] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

History — political or personal — must be 
of vital, dramatic nature to be of more than 
passing interest to the young mind whose 
natural bent is to look forward, not back- 
ward. " The good old times " were doubt- 
less all right in their day, but every young 
person believes that these present times are 
better than any old ones. Assuredly, they are 
the living times with which the young and 
mature alike have to deal. 

There is the insidious temptation — espe- 
cially to people of small affairs and contracted 
experience — to try to make one's self or one's 
personal interests, the chief object of every- 
body's attention. It would seem as if very 
many people were suffering from an uninter- 
mittent run of a disease that might aptly be 
called the Personal History disease. 

Sometimes this disease appears in an inof- 
fensive, albeit an uninteresting, form; those 
thus afflicted give detailed accounts of their 
trivial past experiences, and present intents 
and doings to any and all who will listen. 
More often the Personal History disease ap- 

[152] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

pears in virulent and vulgar form, where not 
only personal acts and what " he said " and 
" I said " are rehearsed, but where, also, 
physical ailments, past, present and expected, 
are shamelessly exploited. 

This disease is not dependent upon weather, 
place or season. It breaks out at any time 
on the slightest provocation. To give a civil 
"How do you do?" greeting to a person 
whose brain is infected with it is risky. One 
is in danger of being deluged with a minute 
account of aches and pains, " symptoms " and 
" developments " ; or even of being made the 
unwilling recipient of harrowing confidences 
about " my operation." While the mention 
of a physician, a nurse, a hot-water bag, cli- 
mate, travel, or anything whatsoever remotely 
associated with some physical inharmony is 
enough to start the Personal History disease 
raging at high temperature. 

If good taste, refinement and consideration 
for others are not Sufficient to make people 
positive against this malady, then self-interest 
and one's future welfare should do so. Re- 

[153] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

picturing sickness, suffering and sorrow is 
extremely devitalizing, aging. In " Mind 
Building " Dr. Elmer Gates says: "Weari- 
some, unpleasant memories weaken the health 
and do not generate thought energy. They 
should be expelled by a crop of pleasant mem- 
ories. This process of upbuilding by substi- 
tution can be applied up to the period of 
decrepitude." 

There is no denying that life ever tends 
toward the personal. Each individual is 
more interested in self than in any one or 
anything else. Even the self-sacrificing 
mother is devoted and self-sacrificing because 
it is her pleasure to be so. But, while each 
person is the center of his or her world, only 
those who are morbidly personal make self 
also the circumference of their world. It is 
worthy social service to sidetrack people when 
their conversation starts off on any Self line. 
Justice to one's self demands that one switch 
them off on another line, if possible, when 
they begin to unload their woes wholesale 
upon one. 

[154] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

A friend to whom this conversational side- 
tracking had been suggested, writes of her 
experiment with a summer guest. She says: 
" Mrs. A — 's life seemed pitched in a minor 
key. I determined to strike for a major. 
Every time she commenced on a doleful re- 
cital of past events I managed to change the 
conversation, to introduce some subject of 
interest that was alive, right here and now. 
(Oh, how I hate these catacombs-habits of 
thinking and living ! With never ' a glad ' 
for the sunshine of to-day!) Whenever she 
sighed — which she did often — I immediately 
called her attention to something cheery, or 
' comfy,' or funny. Dear ! dear ! How my 
bump of ingenuity has been exercised! I 
made her do things, too, instead of moping 
and thinking that she was miserable — the 
children, the dog, the enticing weather and 
the lake were my allies. Result: Before the 
end of the first week she had brightened up 
perceptibly; second week, symptoms improv- 
ing; third week, a critical point. I proposed 
an all-day's rowing excursion up the lake. 

[155]. 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

She agreed, although ' she hadn't been on 
the water since she went into mourning.' 
Then I took my courage between my teeth 
and told her it was time to come out of mourn- 
ing. She looked startled and went upstairs; 
but when she came down ready for our trip 
she was wearing Margery's white sweater. 
After that it was easy sailing (by land as well 
as by sea). At the end of two months she 
was rejuvenated. Why, she was positively 
gay, almost hilarious at times! And she 
looked fifteen years younger. Poor dear! 
She had exiled herself so long from the joy 
of being a part of TO-DAY that her spirit was 
starved and her body discouraged." This is 
a good illustration of the effect of Lecky's 
prescription : " By throwing their whole na- 
ture into the interests of others men most 
effectually escape the melancholy of introspec- 
tion; the horizon of life is enlarged; the 
development of the moral and sympathetic 
feelings chases egotistic cares."* 

How many people exile themselves by self- 

* Lecky's "Map of Life." 

[156] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

centeredness not only from the joys of the 
present hour, but into dreary, unresourceful 
oldness! " Excessive grief is the enemy to 
the living," says Shakespeare. 

The rut of details tempts people of narrow 
interest. Of course, there is no positive 
harm in attention to details; in fact, many 
commercial positions are chiefly a matter of 
attending to details, while in all unselfish as- 
sociations every one must give due heed to 
various kinds of details. But to circumscribe 
one's interests to the petty details of ordinary 
daily " goings on " is negatively harmful. It 
shuts out wider sympathies and dwarfs one's 
growth. It cramps and dulls the power of 
attention and, in consequence, one's character 
and one's physical well-being inevitably suffer. 
Timidly egotistic people are especially given 
to verbal details. They are miserable if they 
do not receive the approbation of their asso- 
ciates and they seem harassed by the perpet- 
ual fear that they may have been " misunder- 
stood," so " explanations " are ever the order 

[157] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

of the hour. Their tiresome, detailed expla- 
nations of unimportant happenings and re- 
marks often cause them to lose the very ap- 
proval they seek. 

Doers who are making history, here and 
now, have no time to listen to wearisome de- 
tails where the main idea " is lost in a laby- 
rinth of words." A mass description of all 
ordinary happenings, or even an indirect ref- 
erence to them, is usually sufficient to make 
one's meaning clear, and is certainly much less 
wearing on the listener than is a minutely 
detailed account. With which woman would 
you rather live, the one who builds the fire, 
fills the teakettle and puts it over, grinds the 
coffee, sets the table, poaches the eggs, makes 
the toast, calls the family to breakfast and 
sees that every one is helped to what he or she 
likes, or the woman who gets breakfast and 
serves it? 

The rut of sameness is another social pit- 
fall. Gelett Burgess has recently christened 
those who are mired in it " Bromides." He 

[158] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

says : " The Bromide has no surprises for you. 
When you see one enter a room, you must 
reconcile yourself to the inevitable. No hope 
for flashes of original thought, no illuminat- 
ing, newer point of view, no sulphitic flashes 
of fancy — the steady glow of bromidic con- 
versation and action is all one can hope for. 
He may be wise and good, he may be loved 
and respected — but he lives inland; he puts 
not forth to sea. He is there when you want 
him, always the same."* 

One of the reasons why little children are 
such objects of interest to all right-hearted 
adults is because their new acquirements, their 
progressive infantile imitations of our own 
acts and expressions, have the charm of the 
new, the unexpected. Suppose that a little 
child, one who was exceedingly " cute," 
" dear " and " roguish," was always cute, 
dear and roguish in the same way; that it had 
no variety, that for weeks and months it 
learned no new tricks. Would we not grow 

* Gelett Burgess's " Are You a Bromide?" 

[159] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

tired of its expressions as we would of an 
intricate mechanical doll that could do some 
marvelous antics times without end, but could 
do never a new thing? 

Repetition unleavened by variety always 
leads to diminution of attention. Fascinating 
people are those whose action, thought and 
mood we cannot anticipate, in whose presence 
we are always prepared for the unexpected; 
who lure us to realms of fancy away from 
the humdrum, who charm us by their resource- 
fulness, their versatility of sympathy and 
interest. 

It is far from complimentary to say that a 
person is " always the same." We know just 
what to expect — the same stale, old ideas, 
views, complaints, prejudices, attitudes, man- 
nerisms, tones and inflections. To feel that 
one can always rely on a person, that he or 
she is absolutely sincere and loyal is, of course, 
the only basis for enduring friendship; but, 
as we love living, let us have variety of objec- 
tive expression throughout the whole emo- 
tional gamut. Even such high virtues as 

[i 60] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

optimism, cheerfulness and kindness may lose 
much of their potency if they always appear 
in the same guise. 

There are many people to-day who par- 
tially, at least, realize that depressing and 
antagonistic mental states are as unhealthful 
as they are unethical. But not a few of these 
same people are so insistent in advocating 
" right thinking " that they become as irri- 
tating with their stock phrases, " Don't 
worry," " All is good," " Have faith," and 
" Cheer up," as the habitually pessimistic 
person is spiritually depressing. One may 
even nag about such altogether useful things 
as rubbers, overcoats, umbrellas, flannels, 
hours of sleep and articles of diet. A devoted 
mother sometimes loses " her hold " on her 
half-grown son because she is persistently too 
solicitous concerning his welfare. Were her 
affection to take a different form of expres- 
sion, were it to give the boy a chance to be the 
protector instead of the protected, her influ- 
ence would be more secure. 

Another rut that must, indeed, be guarded 
[161] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

against " as we would guard against the 
plague," is the rut of iteration — the habit of 
telling the same incident or experience again 
and again to the same person or persons. 
Iteration and reiteration are pre-eminently 
signs of the mind's infirmity, of loss of co-or- 
dinate memory. We all know people in their 
dotage — may right living save us from it! — 
who will tell the same incident over twenty 
times in a day and be quite innocent of having 
mentioned it. Such maundering is one of the 
tragedies of old age which makes the heart 
grieve. 

But no indulgence is warranted toward 
people still in the strength of their years and 
vigorous in mind who allow themselves to 
fall into this most tedious of habits. Nothing 
is more irksome, more exhaustive to the fac- 
ulty of attention, than to listen to these ego- 
tistic repetitions. It takes large courtesy to 
endure such trials of patience patiently. And 
may it not be mistaken courtesy, ultimate un- 
kindness, to listen without protest to the 
unthinking iterations of a friend or acquain- 

[162] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

tance? Should we not drop a hint of the 
dangers ahead? 

Well would it be for each of us, if we were 
blessed with such outspoken companions as 
a little five-years-old friend of mine proved 
herself to be. This free little soul was stand- 
ing quietly by the window apparently giving 
no heed to the conversation of her older sister 
and a young gentleman caller; but when the 
young gentleman began to relate some inci- 
dent which he had told during a previous call, 
she turned to him and ingenuously said : " Sis- 
ter knows that. You told it to her the other 
day." 

It is an unwritten law, in a certain family 
of goodly numbers where the spirit of chum- 
miness is the presiding genius, that each one 
shall be protected by the others from the 
social sin of iteration. Each one is monitor 
over the rest. If any one commences to re- 
tell an incident or experience, some member is 
sure to hum, " One, two, Buckle the shoe," 
or to call out, " Once, twice and then again," 
or significantly to hold up two fingers. No 

[163] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

one enters into this anti-rut custom more 
heartily than does the seventy-three-years- 
young grandmother. Every person has need 
to be an alert self-monitor in order not to be 
betrayed into this aging habit of reiteration. 

There is also an uninteresting sameness in 
our daily movements. In a little social gath- 
ering a woman seated herself on a stool near 
an open fireplace as unconsciously as a child 
would have done so. A gentleman caller 
glancing at her and then at his complaisant, 
conventional wife who, according to " good 
form," sat stiffly erect, he smilingly said: " I 
beg your pardon for being personal, but I 
must say I like the ease with which you sit 
wherever you want to. I should expect the 
stars would fall if my wife were so to make 
herself comfortable." Ruts! ruts! 

How many adults sit, stand, turn, walk, 
move the hands, head, hips, shoulders, eye- 
brows and lips, do all physical expressions in 
the same way, with little or no variation 
throughout the whole day! No wonder we 
often look stupid and are so. 

[i6 4 ] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

How about the emotional life of people 
whose voices are deadly monotonous — often 
monotonous on a high strained key? Monot- 
ony of effect, monotony of cause! If the 
outer expression is dull, so is the inner feel- 
ing. If I had to choose a companion from a 
score of strangers, I should choose one who 
had vocal variety, for I should know that 
there was mental variety behind it. We may 
well pray to be protected from the friend 
who has no intellectual and emotional 
" stops " and " variations." 

If any person doubts the tendency of people 
in general, and of himself or herself in partic- 
ular, to get into the rut of sameness in daily 
social intercourse, let such one question those 
persons whom he or she frequently meets 
when off guard, so to speak. Could not the 
grocer, butcher, laundress, dressmaker, tailor, 
milliner, the janitor, postman, bell-boy and of- 
fice clerk give unmistakable character sketches 
of the different people whom they serve? In- 
deed, yes, if they were sufficiently imitative. 

Reader, think of a score of your friends or 

[i6 5 ] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

acquaintances. Cannot you readily pigeon- 
hole nearly all of them according to their 
habitual trends of thought, their habitual 
tones and their habitual bodily expressions? 
One is always narrowly critical; one is ab- 
sorbed in petty household tribulations; one is 
full of business — the stock market, insurance, 
buying and selling, everything brought to the 
scale of dollars and cents — one is always 
hunting for the mote in the eye of some one 
else, never seeing the beam in his own eye; 
another is interested in reforms; another is 
forever making a diagnosis of his or her phys- 
ical condition; another is given to inventory- 
ing the misfortunes or scandals in his or her 
circle of acquaintances. 

Occasionally one meets people from the 
Isle of Enchantment, where ruts are unknown. 
People who are young and lovely of spirit, 
no matter how many years they have lived; 
who are interested in art, music, literature, the 
stage, travel, philosophy, reforms, settlement 
work, and incidentally, but sufficiently and 
wisely, in personal matters — in business or in 
[166] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

housekeeping: people who give freely, un- 
grudgingly of their inner, best self. To pass 
an hour in such a person's society is as invigo- 
rating as to breathe ozone from the moun- 
tain-tops. 

One of the social arts that makes most for 
youngness of life, is the art of lending our- 
selves generously, sympathetically, to people 
and in being positively, not passively, related 
to the immediate interests of the hour. Nearly 
all persons whose actual interests seem lim- 
ited and exclusively personal, have enough 
possible interests to make them delightful 
companions. They should squarely face their 
social attitude and bestir themselves mentally 
to improve it. Expression — out-giving of 
one's self — changes the possible into the 
actual. Interests grow by food and exercise as 
does the body. 

Would you, my prosaic housewife, make 
your social contribution less monotonous, 
more worth while ? When next a friend calls 
to see you — either because she is fond of you 
or because she wants to square up her society 

[167] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

debts — greet her in new fashion. If it has 
been your custom for years perhaps to say in 
a matter of fact, unemotional way, " Good 
afternoon; I'm glad to see you," say, instead, 
in your cheeriest tone something after this 
order: "Hello, dear! It's jolly of you to 
come to see me to-day ! Let's sit here in the 
sunshine and play we haven't a care in the 
world." Omit the customary dole of petty 
domestic problems. Instead of talking about 
your cook, or the weather, or disease, or 
neighborhood gossip, introduce topics of gen- 
eral interest. Speak of some work of art, 
some public movement; discuss the latest 
novel and compare it with " Adam Bede," or 
call her attention to a paragraph by some fav- 
orite author; ask her opinion about the " Psy- 
chology of Mobs," or name an afternoon for 
her to spend with you reading Shakespeare. 
Tell a funny story or incident. Sing a snatch 
of an old song and ask if she remembers the 
rest. Show her an exercise for keeping the 
body supple or for preventing corpulency. Do 
anything that is different from your customary 
[168] 



SOCIAL RUTS 

social output. Seize the opportunity to con- 
tribute something worth while, socially, for 
the gift of your friend's time and attention. 

Such manifestation of freshness of interest, 
of aliveness on your part, will assuredly in- 
crease your charm as a hostess. Moreover 
it will be a direct step upward for you and 
your guest out of the rut of trivial, unworthy 
social commerce. " It is very easy to be dull. 
It is very easy to give your second-best, to be 
less excellent than you might have been. It 
is very easy to decline accomplishments which 
require hard work, to decline a health and 
beauty which ask the price of sturdy living, to 
decline human service which involves an over- 
flowing measure of love and skill. It is very 
easy to call laziness patience; to call meanness 
prudence; to call cowardice caution; to call 
the common-place the practical and mere in- 
ertia conservatism."* 

Emerson says, " Almost all people descend 
to meet.' , But why should they? The best 
one can give is none too good for a friend. 

* Henderson's "Education and the Larger Life.'* 

[169] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

Richness of life comes not by being exclusive, 
but inclusive in our sympathies. The art of 
living a beautiful, helpful life with one's kind, 
in the home and the community, is the highest 
art of all, is the highest achievement of civil- 
ization. Such living requires constant obe- 
dience to the Biblical injunction, " Be ye 
renewed by the renewing of your minds." 
Unless the mind is frequently renewed, one 
soon becomes a social dead-weight — old, irre- 
spective of years. 



[170] 



"Old age is to feel but half, and 
feebly, what you feel." — Matthew 
Arnold. 

"It makes a tremendous difference 
what people are thinking about as they 
carry on their work. The principle of 
thought-direction is the basis of all 
scientific pedagogic effort." — C. Han- 
ford Henderson. 



XIII 

DOMESTIC RUTS 

" When in Rome do as the Romans do " ; that 
is, drop your old habits, your old way of 
doing things whenever you go into a new 
environment. Drop the old, embrace the 
new, if you would see Rome. 

Change of scene, new environment, new 
associations with nature, art and people are 
transforming, rejuvenating agencies. They 
help to deliver us from the same old stimuli 
and the same old reactions, mental, emotional 
and physical. How often do people come 
home from a foreign trip, or from a visit 
to some part of their own country that was 
foreign to them, or from a month's camping 
in the pine woods, feeling " made over " ! 

As a general thing people who travel much, 

[i73] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

business men and women who seize vacation 
opportunities as eagerly as they seize business 
opportunities, bear fewer and less ugly ear- 
marks of their profession than do stay-at- 
home people. But if we fail to do " as the 
Romans do when in Rome," we shall miss the 
chief benefits of the new environment. When 
we take home and business cares and habits 
with us, why, Rome is not really a new en- 
vironment, only our old environment taken 
into a new locality. 

Men and women, the latter especially, need 
to be emancipated from the house rut. New 
stimulus to thought, emotion and action is 
not dependent upon travel or a new locality. 
It is ever just outside our own door. 

No reactions are more wholesome and vivi- 
fying than those which result from hours 
spent in " God's great out-of-doors." Yet, 
" pity 'tis, 'tis true," thousands of women who 
virtually command their time are so enslaved 
by the tyranny of things — the making of 
things, the doing of things, the collecting 
of things, the care of things, the worry 

[174] 



DOMESTIC RUTS 

about things — that they seldom have a 
free hour for self-realization and refresh- 
ment out in the great organic universe. 
No prophet ever saw with clearer vision 
than Emerson when he said, " Things are 
in the saddle and ride mankind." This was 
concretely brought home to me to-day in 
a letter from a friend, a woman of unusual 
ability and clear discrimination. She writes: 
" I am busy, too busy. It troubles me to find 
that circumstances do not seem to make much 
difference, either. I am forced to conclude 
that the habit is upon me of taking on a little 
more than I can do, so that the situation al- 
ways seems to be driving me instead of my 
controlling the situation." 

The soul of many a woman who is early 
growing old gives unconscious echo to Rich- 
ard Hovey's words: 

"I'm sick of four walls and a ceiling. 
I have need of the sky. 
I have business with the grass." 

A paying business for every man and woman, 
a need common to all humanity ! 

[i7f] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

The monotonous, inorganic stimulus af- 
forded by " four walls and a ceiling " is the 
primary cause of much of the nervousness 
and the aging irritability to which civilized 
woman is heir. The change most needed is 
from the inside to the outside of her own 
door. 

To say that one " has not the time " to 
enjoy a glorious spring morning, or a walk 
through the fields, or an hour under the trees, 
is equivalent to saying one " has not the time 
to keep young." How many otherwise sensi- 
ble women are guilty of moral short-sighted- 
ness when it comes to an issue between things 
or appearances and their own " spiritual 
hygiene." The young wife who, fagged and 
jaded, was putting in the remnant of her nerv- 
ous energy, one sweltering August afternoon, 
on a new gown, is only a type of a large class. 
In reply to her husband's remonstrance, " Do 
stop sewing, my dear ! You look so tired and 
worn," this young woman replied, " Yes, 
Henry, I know it, but one has to if one's 
clothes are to look fresh and pretty." 

[i 7 6] 



DOMESTIC RUTS 

The magnetism and vital exhilaration of 
outdoor life looses the shackles of senseless 
conventionalities and lets one's spirit come 
into its own. But here, as everywhere, the 
individual must do his part. In order to 
gain most he must give freely, must respond. 
As we accustom ourselves more and more to 
respond to the sky, the sunshine and the pure 
air — be it warm, cold or damp; as we lend 
ourselves to the sensuous beauty of the pure 
outline of the mountains against the sky, the 
flicking light on tree-trunks in the woods, the 
color glory of the sunset; as we yield our- 
selves more and more to Nature's upbuilding 
influences; as we breathe more deeply and let 
go the strain, contraction and worry of busi- 
ness and of indoor life, increasing delight and 
multiplied reactions will attend the hours 
spent out of doors. 

People living in the country often fail to 
receive the richest influences from their en- 
vironment because they are not sympathetic- 
ally, may I say, spiritually, related to it. They 
see no poetry in their surroundings, only dull 
[177] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

prose. " The good brown earth " is common 
dirt to them. 

Outdoor life is commonplace to any indi- 
vidual in just the degree that he fails to give 
quickened response to it. Nature sings her 
songs for all, but people must be awakened 
in sense and soul to receive in full the minis- 
trations of which John Muir writes: " Climb 
the mountains and get their good tidings. 
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine 
flows into the trees. The winds will blow 
their own freshness into you, and the storms 
their energy, while cares will drop off like 
autumn leaves." 

Life indoors, also, may be varied and in- 
teresting or monotonous, benumbing and ag- 
ing. Some may claim that whoever does 
housework must, perforce, get into a domes- 
tic rut ; that housework, at its best, is monoto- 
nous, and that it is impossible to idealize it. 
We may not be able to put poetry into all 
kinds of work, but there is a tonic effect in 
the realization that any work is better for 
us than no work — better for brain and body. 

[178] 



DOMESTIC RUTS 

" My daily task, whatever it is, that is what 
mainly educates me."* Dr. Henry Van 
Dyke voices psychological truth when he 
says, " Work, my blessing, not my doom." 
Doubtless that perverted mental attitude to- 
ward living which one has termed " the pas- 
sion for material comfort " makes housework 
seem more monotonous to some women than 
it really need be. 

This is not attempting to deny that there is 
much sameness about housework; so there is 
about nearly all occupations save those that 
are of a strictly creative nature. But the 
element of monotony — that element that 
makes drudgery of work and so degrades 
the worker — can be relieved here as else- 
where, if the right spirit is brought to the 
work. Take, for instance, one feature of 
housework, namely, the getting of meals: 
three meals a day for seven days in the week, 
for fifty-two weeks in the year, for years un- 
numbered. A monotonous outlook, indeed! 
How can new interest be provoked ? In many 

* Gannett' s "Blessed be Drudgery." 

[179] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

little ways. Occasionally, prepare an unac- 
customed dish', have a meal at an hour other 
than the habitual one, change the order of 
the places at the table and allow one of the 
children to serve or pour the coffee instead 
of " mother " ; reverse the order of courses by 
serving a delicate sherbet first, or have wal- 
nuts with the toast at breakfast rather than 
for dessert at dinner ; surprise the family with 
a very light meal, say, bread and milk, where 
they are accustomed to have meat and vegeta- 
bles; go to a restaurant for an occasional din- 
ner; put some sandwiches into a basket and 
have an impromptu picnic, or have breakfast 
on the porch or under the trees with apple- 
blossoms for a canopy. 

Such variation in meals may also serve to 
keep some of the family from the diet rut. 
An occasional change of food has been found 
essential for live stock; certainly, it is more 
so for human beings. 

If for no other reason than to protect our- 
selves from becoming " cranky " — which 
frankly means notional, old — we should disci- 
[180] 



DOMESTIC RUTS 

pline ourselves to partake of different kinds 
of food, or of the same kind of food differ- 
ently prepared. If our eggs have been boiled 
each morning for a week, that in itself is rea- 
son enough why they should now be poached 
or scrambled. A gentleman visiting a friend 
sat down to a tempting breakfast of fruit, 
chops, rolls and coffee. He declined every- 
thing except the coffee, saying that he had not 
eaten a breakfast in ten years without pan- 
cakes. He was in the pancake rut. 

How conspicuous is our slavery to environ- 
ment and to mere things when we cannot feel 
comfortable or " at home " unless all of the 
little customary details of living are adjusted 
to our habits and tastes ! A woman who had 
not lived more than fifty-five years, but had 
lived those in a very narrow, perpendicular 
groove, received a hint that doing every-day 
acts in different ways was conducive to young- 
ness. On Sunday she conscientiously started 
out to experiment. At church she sat in the 
middle of her pew instead of the end, as was 
her wont. The following day in relating her 
[181] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

experience, she was emphatic in denouncing 
the idea of doing accustomed acts in a new 
way. She said that as long as she sat in the 
center of the pew she felt so out of place 
that she could not keep her mind on sacred 
things. Not until she moved back into the 
corner where she had sat for twenty years did 
the usual church feeling possess her. What a 
confession of bondage ! A place in her pew 
two or three feet removed from the customary 
one had power to expel all religious sentiments 
from the well-intentioned woman's mind! 
And the worst of it was, instead of learning 
the lesson, laughing at herself and reforming, 
she condemned the idea, which if she had con- 
tinued to carry into motor expression, would 
have made it possible for her to worship in 
any attitude or any place. 

Blessed be anything that lessens bondage 
to the habitual in our daily objective life! 

Fashions have been railed at as entailing 
a waste of time, money and nervous energy, 
but ever changing fashion has also another 
order of influence. Dr. George E. Vincent 

[182] 



DOMESTIC RUTS 

says: "Fashions help to prevent social in- 
sanity, the constant change keeping the people 
from going crazy." 

A radical change in costume sometimes acts 
like a magician in transforming the wearer's 
very self. Golf, tennis and outing suits have 
brought new motor reactions in their train. 
They have put to rout not a little stiffness 
and aging staidness. Picture hats and their 
more demure relatives have been missionaries 
of youth and beauty to many a woman who, 
before succumbing to their transforming 
witchery, had been addicted to prim, severe 
bonnets. It is a social contribution to make a 
person look, act and feel younger. All hail 
to new styles of dress — especially to becom- 
ing ones ! 

The change in the color and expression of 
women's clothes, which has quite generally 
come about during the last few years, is sig- 
nificant of the growing tendency among 
women to cling to their youth and to postpone 
the appearances of old age as long as possible. 
More white, and more colors — softer and 

[183] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

lighter — are worn by them than formerly. 
The stimuli to the brain from these colors can- 
not fail in being more vivifying than that re- 
ceived from the leaden grays and dead browns 
that were so prevalent up to a score of years 
ago. Fortunately, too, the reign of black as 
the garb of mourning, which has so long pre- 
vailed, is being questioned by many people, 
and strongly opposed by some. Black is so 
unalive, gloomy and hopeless in its expres- 
sion ! Its reactionary effect upon the feelings 
of those whose hearts are heavy laden must 
be depressing, even though its influence may 
be unrecognized. Moreover, an unrelieved 
black dress has a marked aging effect on the 
face of the wearer. Not all girls in their teens 
are superior to its effect. It is unkind to all 
save youth that is literally " round-cheeked," 
while it is positively cruel to thin faces with 
sharp features, and to faces deeply carved or 
furrowed by suffering. Black intensifies with 
a deeper shadow every hollow and line of the 
face, and gives the features a hard, drawn ex- 
pression. 

[184] 



DOMESTIC RUTS 

Those who would avoid old-age conditions 
should have the courage to get rid of clothes 
and other things that have been associated 
with soul-harrowing experiences — tragedies, 
sickness and death. Does such procedure 
seem, at first thought, hard and unfeeling? 
It is simply sane, sensible, psychologic. One's 
memory and imagination are unwholesomely 
stimulated by the sight of things having tragic 
associations. These reminders lead one to 
dwell upon past agonies, that, in justice to the 
present hour and to one's future, should be 
kept out of the foreground of consciousness. 

To be " near " and wear shabby, ugly old 
clothes when one can afford suitable new ones 
is economy that results in loss, instead of 
gain. Such parsimony, while anticipating a 
rainy day that may never overtake one, makes 
one look and feel old, mean and out-of-place 
in the sunshine of to-day. Worst of all, it 
shrivels the spirit. How impossible it is to 
conceive of a generous-spirited, open-minded 
miser. 

Another domestic rut is the furniture rut, 

[185] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

Many people have a certain chair in which 
they habitually sit. Frequently a chair be- 
comes distinguished as " mother's chair," 
" sister Clara's chair," " Uncle John's chair." 
Such specifically pre-empted chairs usually 
have their particular places in the room from 
which they are seldom moved. 

It takes no gift of prophecy to foretell 
where we shall find certain chairs, and who 
will be occupying them in certain homes. 
Domestic animals are likewise reliable. The 
same cow goes to the same stall with great 
regularity every night. Dogs habitually find 
the same soft spots on the floor. But cows 
and dogs are not accredited with aspirations 
toward intellectual progress, nor are they sup- 
posed to be able to reason, to will, to have 
the power to weigh and to choose. They 
can afford to become largely automatic in 
their reactions, but with thinking, loving, 
willing, progressive man it is different. 

A woman who is swiftly traveling the road 
toward early oldness, recently moved into a 
beautiful new home. A friend who knows 
[186] 



DOMESTIC RUTS 

her well remarked: "When Mrs. M 

once gets her furniture placed and the pictures 
hung, it is done for a lifetime. There is no 
such thing as change with her. She is too 
set." We all know these precise, exact, pain- 
ful housekeepers — old women, every one. 

An appreciation, half-humorous and half- 
pathetic, of his wife's setness was evidenced 
in a letter from a gentleman to his sister, who 
had visited them a few years before. She 
had asked if they still had the same lamp. 
He wrote: " Yes, the same lamp on the same 
mat on the same table, and the table on the 
same spot in the same carpet." 

Furniture, pictures, people, need new 
lights, new settings, to bring out all their 
variety and beauty. It is newness — change 
of activity, change of relation to things as 
well as to people — that affords the stimulus 
to new brain impressions and to new bodily 
reactions. 

A most charming seventy-odd years young 
woman laughingly said, when a gentleman 
rose and suggested that he had her easy-chair: 

[187] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

" My chair ! I haven't any chair. I scorn 
to have a chair. Any kind of a seat — a bench, 
three-legged stool, straight back- or easy- 
chair — is all the same to me. I have seen too 
much of life to allow myself to get into a chair 
rut." 

That tells the whole story. We get into 
chair ruts, drinking ruts, eating ruts, sleep- 
ing ruts, dressing ruts, working ruts, and even 
recreation and amusement ruts. The salva- 
tion of our youthfulness requires that we un- 
flinchingly abandon these well-worn grooves, 
and direct our daily footsteps into unaccus- 
tomed byways, if not highways. 



[188] 



"Few causes age the body faster 
than willful indolence and monotony 
of mind — the mind, that very princi- 
ple of physical youthfulness. — James 
Lane Allen. 

"Everything centers in the emo- 
tional life. To stunt and cripple and 
repress that is to make impossible a 
full life in other directions. Kill it and 
you have the dead souls of the social 
world. In childhood the emotional 
life is strong. Here, I think, and not 
in Florida, is to be found the fountain 
of perpetual youth. We should never 
grow old if in our hearts we could 
keep always the full flood of feeling. 
It is the drying up of this part of our 
natures that makes possible the dread- 
ful indifference and paralysis of old 
age. ' ' — C. Hanford Henderson. 



XIV 

THINKING AND FEELING RUTS 

A kind of mental laziness which for lack of a 
better term may be called inertia of the will — 
disinclination to vigorous mental effort — is, 
perhaps, the chiefest of all the causes of old 
age. It is easy to dawdle mentally; for no 
will-action is required when the wheels of 
thought aimlessly revolve in accustomed 
grooves. Such come-as-you-please thoughts 
are practically automatic — the undirected 
response to some stimulus. 

Directed thinking to some definite end — 
which is the only kind of thinking that makes 
for the retention of mental vigor — requires 
effort. " If you are going to use your mind, 

[191] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

use it with all your heart. Thinking is almost 
a lost art in our country," says Edward 
Howard Griggs. A virile will takes the in- 
itiative; it is pioneering, daring and definite. 
Inertia of the will manifests itself in such 
mental habits as treadmill thinking, moon- 
ing, vain longings and wool-gathering. 

During the early part of life, the strong 
stimuli afforded by school and college study 
and sports, by the first few years of aggressive 
business and professional life, and by the nov- 
elty of home-making are sufficient to keep the 
brain quite generally active; but as time goes 
by, the early stimuli no longer stimulate. 
The result is that the average person of forty 
years thinks and feels principally in ruts; and 
thoughts and emotions control his acts. 

It is well, occasionally, to take an inventory 
of our stock of ideas, of our staple lines of 
thought, and to close out those that have be- 
come " dead stock." To make room for the 
new, the old must go — old prejudices and 
superannuated ideas as well as outgrown 
clothes and old business methods. 
[192] 



THINKING AND FEELING RUTS 

True, this is setting a task that is difficult 
for some natures. But what matter, if growth 
follows ! It may even seem like losing a part 
of one's very self to give up certain long cher- 
ished ideas, for one's opinions and habits of 
thought are very intimately associated with 
the real primary " me." But if one's mental 
furnishings have become shabby, no matter 
what their associations, they must be dis- 
carded. " Angels must go, that archangels 
may come." 

If there be people, as 'tis reported, who are 
" intellectually and spiritually immune to a 
new idea," the knell of their youth has already 
sounded. Continued aliveness of the human 
mind is dependent not alone on vigorous exer- 
cise in some direction, but equally so on 
diversity of exercise. In fact, too exclusive 
thinking along any one line jeopardizes the 
mind's adaptability — its power of rebound 
from shock and stress. All of the so-called 
" faculties " must be frequently brought into 
play, else the mind as a whole suffers. 

No other part of our psychical equipment 
[i93] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

needs more discreet guidance than does the 
imagination. " Not the logical faculty, but 
the imagination, is king over us," says Car- 
lyle. The imagination is the creative power 
of the mind, and as such plays the leading role 
in many a life-drama. Its creations are by 
no means confined to symphonies, poetry, pic- 
tures, wonderland romances, nor to discov- 
eries, inventions and scientific investigations. 
Many a person who would declare and hon- 
estly believe that " he had no imagination " 
is largely controlled by his imagination, which 
not infrequently is perverted and distorted. 

Suspicion, cynicism, hypersensitiveness, hys- 
teria, morbidity and insanity are some of the 
misshapen children of perverted imagination. 
The fear rut — and who does not occasionally 
slip into its miasmic depths? — is crowded 
with people whose imagination has been al- 
lowed to run wild. Having no legitimate 
field of exercise, the imagination plays fan- 
tastic havoc with everyday affairs. Mothers 
worry themselves cross because the imagina- 
tion suggests possible catastrophes and malig- 
[i94] 



THINKING AND FEELING RUTS 

nant epidemics. Wives fret themselves into 
unloveliness because an idle imagination 
makes mountains out of molehills. The un- 
employed rich imagine themselves into 
invalids. 

Regular habitues of the fear rut fear the 
impossible as well as the possible. They fear 
the things that have been, that are, that are 
to be and are not to be ; thus do they exclude 
present joy and invite future misfortune. 
People fear old age and dependence; and by 
so doing they not only hasten oldness, but, in 
imagination, live in the poor-house to-day. 
These are the poor in spirit who are not 
" blessed." 

Every person who worries is, in some de- 
gree, the victim of a perverted imagination. 
For what is worry but mentally crossing 
bridges before one comes to them, or, in imag- 
ination, repeatedly rehearsing something that 
has or has not occurred? A friend to whom 
this suggestion was made, said: " Yes, that is 
quite true of the many needless worries in 
which people weakly indulge, but what about 

[195] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

worry where there is warrantable cause for 
it?" There never is warrantable cause for 
worry; every intellectually honest person must 
acknowledge that by no process of reason can 
worry be proven to be advantageous or justi- 
fiable. Worry is loss of mental poise as much 
as a fit of temper is and, also, quite as devital- 
izing. Squarely facing a difficult situation, 
whether it be a temporary one or an abiding 
one, and clearly thinking out the best possible 
way of meeting it with the resources at one's 
command, is a radically different mental proc- 
ess from worry — the one is organically con- 
structive, the other organically destructive. 
A gentleman, who has had to meet many 
exacting situations during the past few years, 
gives the following recipe for overcoming 
small worries and for escaping the worst 
effects of a " warrantable " worry: " To over- 
come an army of small worries, let a big one 
enter the field ; to escape insanity from a single 
big worry, get several of equal intensity." 

An atrophied imagination means, at best, 
a commonplace, unresourceful Gradgrind 

[i 9 6] 



THINKING AND FEELING RUTS 

person; one who deals in "nothing but 
facts," whose mental reach does not extend 
beyond the immediate report of his five 
senses. The practical is the only goal for 
which such a person strives — he is incapable 
of seeing those that are beyond. Practicality 
is a sturdy and a worthy characteristic, but it 
is by no means the whole of character. Every 
nature needs somewhat of its steadying influ- 
ence. Without such ballast one is, indeed, 
poorly equipped for life, for one is then sub- 
ject to every erratic, visionary impulse, to 
every passing whim. But to allow one's self 
to be buried in the rut of practicality means 
death to one's higher powers. 

Ruts of self-depreciation, self-pity and sati- 
ety are some of the other thinking and feeling 
ruts to which wayfarers surrender their young- 
ness. Self-depreciation is a kind of paralyz- 
ing negation. Continued indulgence in it 
produces physical inertness and loss of vital 
tone, while its mental effect is to obscure the 
judgment and gradually undermine the will. 
Often, it is his will that a self-slandering per- 

[197] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

son attacks. He seems to find a weak will a 
convenient scapegoat. He — not infrequently 
it is she — will say in excuse for any shortcom- 
ing, " Oh, yes, I know; but my will is weak. 
I can't help it." Every time one so thinks and 
speaks, the power of resistance, mental and 
physical, is lowered a jot. If I were to realize 
that the muscles of my back or arm were 
weak, would it be rational for me to say, 
" Well, I will strengthen them by persistently 
dwelling on what weak, good-for-nothing 
muscles they are?" Certainly not; rather, 
it would be the sane thing to say, " If they 
are weak, they must be strengthened by judi- 
cious exercises that shall invigorate them and 
rebuild their tissues." 

Apply the same line of reasoning to mental 
states. I recognize that my will is vacillating 
or halting. How shall I strengthen it? Cer- 
tainly not by dwelling upon its weakness. 
The right psychological treatment would be 
to make and re-make a positive statement. 
To think and say: " My will can be toned 
up by exercise and it's going to be. I cannot 

[i 9 8] 



THINKING AND FEELING RUTS 

afford to go back on myself." " There is 
nothing more palsying than doubt and unbe- 
lief. The mere belief that we can do a thing 
becomes an extra cog in the power applied to 
move the wheel of progress."* Of course, 
the expression of belief in one's will should 
be immediately justified by one's doing some- 
thing that requires some degree of determina- 
tion. 

Nothing can be said in extenuation of that 
particular form of will-inertia whose mani- 
festation is self-pity. Ralph Connor calls it 
" the last and most deplorable of all human 
weaknesses." 

The rut of satiety is one of the most hope- 
less of thinking and feeling ruts. Two kinds 
of people are found therein, those who are 
decadent and those who affect the blase state. 
It is the pose of the latter to be "deadly 
bored" by life. The real blase state is men- 
tal wornness — pitiable oldness. It is next to 
impossible to inspire people who have become 
thus degenerate with even a desire to rise 

* Halleck's "Education of the Central Nervous System." 
[199] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

above their subnormal state, much less with 
the will to do so. They have no interest in 
work, people, books, art, current or historic 
events. Such a mental state is dangerously 
enervating, physically; unfortunates of the 
blase type soon become passe. Is it not a 
tremendously sad thing to have worn out — 
or to think we have — the great variety of 
world interests? 

Years, rightly lived, should bring a multi- 
plication, not a relinquishment, of interests. 
Even that which is very familiar contains 
something new for us if our senses are not 
holden. The musical scale has only eight fun- 
damental notes. Every piece of music illus- 
trates the new use of the old — from new 
combinations arise new harmonies. Surely, 
this world and the wonders and mysteries 
thereof are sufficient to hold one's interest for 
one lifetime — stretch the span as best one 
may. 

Certain emotional ruts lead precipitately 
to old age. These are ruts of anger, malice, 
envy, jealousy, suspicion, despondency, sad- 
[200] 



THINKING AND FEELING RUTS 

ness and grieving. A significant incident is 
related of a great singing master who smiled 
serenely when a would-be prima donna, beside 
herself with rage, abused him in the presence 
of others. To the remonstrances of a friend, 
the master replied, " I shall have my revenge 
in seeing her grow old." 

Antagonistic feeling, of whatever order, is 
aging. It is physiologically contractive, in- 
hibitive; it interferes with the free function- 
ing of the vital processes upon which health 
and youth depend. Depressed feeling of 
whatever order is aging. It is physiologically 
enervating; it lowers the tone of the entire 
system. Hopeful, joyous feeling of whatever 
order is upbuilding. It is physiologically 
magnetic and vitalizing; it especially relaxes 
the muscles of the arteries and bronchial tubes, 
thus promoting free circulation and respira- 
tion; it makes for the harmonious activity of 
the whole organism. 

We cannot afford to carry chips on our 
shoulders, nor unkindness in our hearts, nor 
afford to be morose or despondent, nor afford 
[201] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

the " luxury of grief." The boomerang 
tendencies of thoughts and actions are sug- 
gested by Whitman when he says : 

" The song is to the singer and comes back most to him, 
The teaching is to the teacher and comes back most to 

him, 
The theft is to the thief and comes back most to him, 
The love is to the lover and comes back most to him, 
The gift is to the giver and comes back most to him, 
It cannot fail. " 

Youngness is likewise imperiled by emo- 
tional apathy and repression. All higher 
emotions — joy, love, hope, courage — are 
physically vivifying. No venture is more 
hazardous than to assume a Micawber-like 
attitude toward matters of the heart. If, in 
our superior self-estimate, we think to reserve 
our sympathy until something worthy of it 
" turns up," we shall waken some day to the 
bitter realization that we have lost the power 
to feel keenly, that we are hard and old at 
heart. Neglect a faculty, and in time it will 
neglect you. 

It is the part of higher selfishness and 
worthy living not to allow ourselves to be 
[202] 



THINKING AND FEELING RUTS 

either indolent or ignorant concerning the 
mind's and body's welfare. As the years 
crowd, the greater is the need to provide new 
stimuli for vivifying reactions. 

Who shall say if such new stimuli were 
abundantly provided during all the " days of 
our years " that our bodies need ever fall into 
fatal decrepitude? Does some one protest: 
" It is foolish optimism to suggest such an 
unscientific possibility. With advancing years 
the body must, perforce, lose its plasticity. 
More lime accumulates in the bones and even 
the walls of the arteries take on old-age char- 
acteristics " ? Perhaps these physiological 
transformations are not preventable and, then, 
perhaps they are. It will take a few genera- 
tions of people who have lived according to 
the habit of the unhabitual, to prove whether 
these changes may not be chiefly due to the 
combined effect of " disadvantageous " men- 
tal states upon the re-building functions of the 
body, and the habit of subnormal activity in 
our physical, thinking and feeling selves. 

Dr. Madison J. Taylor says : " The stiffen- 
[203] 



SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG 

ing of the tissues which is the sign and accom- 
paniment of age, is warded off by exercise. 
Self-indulgence in lazy ways is the sure way 
to senility." Sir Henry Thompson, the oldest 
member of the Royal College of Surgeons, 
England, " was still in the professional har- 
ness " at eighty-four, and declared that " his 
joints were quite free from any stiffness, being 
as supple and mobile as they were in youth." 
Did natural law make an exception here? 
Hardly. From some natural cause this effect 
naturally resulted. May not science hope to 
penetrate to the cause and then command the 
effect ? If by different orders of treatment the 
shells of walnuts can be made to grow thick 
or thin and cacti to grow with or without 
spines, is it not reasonable to believe that 
man's brain and body will show marked 
effects from a new order of psychologic and 
physiologic treatment? Perhaps long before 
the millennium, the answer will be given by 
experience. 

Meanwhile, to-day faces us. How we re- 
act from the stimuli it offers will materially 
[204] 



THINKING AND FEELING RUTS 

affect our own future history. Any one who, 
for a few years, personally makes the test of 
getting out of ruts and keeping out, the test 
of cultivating the habit of the unhabitual in 
thought, feeling and act, will be persuaded 
that such living makes for protection against 
infirmity, decrepitude, senility, and " pre- 
cocious old age." And, better than knowing 
this fact, he himself will be a personal demon- 
stration of it. 



[205] 



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